


Cold Front

by Crowsister



Series: Low-Key [2]
Category: DCU (Comics), The Flash (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, So Many Cameos, so many cameos to older flash comics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-04-08 13:49:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14106744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowsister/pseuds/Crowsister
Summary: Theophania Soliani has been transitioning to this new lifestyle of living with the Rogues as the Rogues transition with their new direction in life. Drowning in doubt, can Theo manage to learn from this new situation? Can Leonard talk about his feelings for once in his life? Tune in to find out.Subtitle: "Anxiety's a bitch, but so am I"





	1. 270 K

####  **Central City, MO** **  
****September 6th, 2014**

“Focus, Key,” Leonard barked. “Think about it. Look over the blueprints, tell me what you see.”

They were in the basement of the favorite safe house of the Rogues (better known to the general public as the house of Lisa Snart, beloved skating teacher for all children ages ten and older). It was a warm, bunker-y type basement (built to survive tornados when they used to hit Central, before the Flash ran out and unwove tornadoes before they hit the city) that had been renovated as a secret base of the Rogues. 

The bricks had secret compartments in them (she’d found a couple, on accident, finding secret stashes of various Rogues throughout the basement: Axel’s hormones and meds [along with a trap teddy bear that ensnared Theo in a net upon hugging it. She should’ve known better, but it was cutely patchwork and  _ begging _ for a hug with its little eyes], Wizard’s weird stash of children’s books and weather textbooks, some hearing aids and MP3 player, and Rory’s fireworks hoard. She was curious where Leonard stashed his shit, after having given up on trying to find the Mirrors’ secret goods when she realized they probably just hid their stuff in the Mirror World). There were trophies in glass cases, sitting on tables behind countertops: they varied from actual trophies (a gold trophy for some kind of music award with the name Hartley Rathaway on it, a large silvery trophy that seemed faintly familiar to Theo, and a pile of medals for Evan from local marathons and running meets) to seemingly random objects (a top the size of Theo’s head, boomerangs cracked in half with curse words written on them in metallic blue-silver marker, and brochures from the Flash Museum that were  _ signed _ by both Rogues and the Flash). The room had history all around it and it took Theo all of her being not to take inventory of it all. For historical records, at least.

She and Leonard were at opposite ends of a large table in the middle of the room, a long blueprint spread out between them with a cheap ceiling lamp hanging over the table. She was wearing some clothes that had been bought for her (she hoped — Lisa had zipped her through clothing stores so quick that she hadn’t seen Leonard at the register. She knew all of her electronics and devices had been bought - she was there for those) as a welcome to the Rogues present: a black tank top (had to keep her shoulder clear so they could check her stitches after her exercises) and a pair of grey sweats. Leonard, outside of his Captain suit, seemed to only have one aesthetic: blue parka (no matter what temperature it was outside), white shirt, and jeans. 

Theo was standing, pacing at her end of the table, and Leonard was sitting backwards in a chair across the table. He didn’t seem to sit in chairs right unless if he was trying to make a power play at someone by puffing up his chest. He was probably referring to her pacing, thinking it wasn’t helping her focus, but she didn’t give a damn.

Theo stopped pacing, in a sharp stop with a short huff. She looked over the blueprint, again for the fifth time. “This is the blueprints for Iron Heights. I don’t know why-”

“I’m training you. We’re not getting into sparring or anything to screw up your shoulder more, so I’m doing what I can to get shit into that thick skull of yours,” he replied. “Iron Heights is the most well fortified building that I’ve got blueprints for — hell, I sketched this out myself from memory. If you can get out of Iron Heights, I’d say that you were prepped for any escape situation. Superheroes get captured, you’re gonna have to escape all sorts of places. So. Tell me what you see and I’ll point out things you’re missing.”

Theo snorted. “Okay. I’m seeing thick walls, probably too thick to do the classic spoon gag to get out-”

“That shit never worked. Mick tried,” Leonard drawled, “in every prison we landed ourselves in.”

Theo lightly pinched herself to keep from smiling. “Good to know. But...I’m seeing an extensive security system, in the hallways and between cells. Getting out the normal way isn’t going to work.” Theo put her left hand on her chin, ghosting her finger over the blueprint.

“Nope,” Leonard replied, popping the p excessively. “They’re prepped for brute force and temporary team ups on this floor. So where’s the backdoor?”

Theo kept looking, leaning over the blueprint. She scrunched up her nose, her eyebrows bunching up over her lime green eyes as they scanned the document. She smirked, looking up at Leonard.

“There’s a backdoor in the plumbing system!” she exhaled the words quickly, almost slurring in her excitement to answer the prompt but not quite slurring. “On this floor, anyway. Wait, wait, wait...” She bit her lip, forcing herself to calm down and go about this like an adult. Calm, precise, slow. “I’m getting ahead of myself.” She winced, remembering the words of so many math teachers: show your work. “So um..this has to be where they hold physically bigger guys, like um...”

“Turtle’s a regular in cell 55 there,” Leonard replied, pointing. “Girder’s his neighbor, along with Tar Pit. Rest are blanks because we don’t have any other big boys like them as regulars yet. So yeah, you’re right. They hold the big boys here. What about it?”

“So like...a lot of these are custom-made cells, due to these being super-powered cells,” she answered, “but...all administrations cut budgets  _ somewhere _ , it’s a universal truth of big operations. They put all this work making custom cells, like here-” she pointed at cell 55 “-I think you noted down a lot of custom tech for foam generation?”

“Thick containment foam,” Leonard answered, “Axel wishes they had their formula, though they’ve got their own copycat formula in their silly string cans. You have enough of it, it solidifies and nobody can move in it. They could encase you in a full cube of it and you’d be able to breathe, with your eyes closed, but moving’s gonna be a no-go. They put it in Turtle’s cell so he can’t make kinetic energy to manipulate by bouncing shit around.” He snorted. “Warden Wolfe tried an anti-gravity chamber to try to contain him, once. Fastest I’ve seen him escape, bouncing like a kid on pixie sticks.”

She snorted. “ _ Well _ , they cut budgets on the plumbing. While everything  _ else _ is custom made per prisoner by what I assume is their power and skillset, the plumbing looks like it’s all one size fits all...and those pipes look like they fit  **huge** .”

“Tar Pit’s body is weird as shit, bigger pipes makes the messes easier to clean up, probably less clogging,” Leonard replied. “So what’s the plan here?”

“The pipes are big enough for me to wiggle through, what with the three feet wide diameter,” she replied. “Sure, if I was in Turtle’s cell I’d be screwed, there’s no way I could get out of a full cell of anything like or stronger than Tricks’s silly string...not without something to eat through it anyway and I don’t think smuggling anything acidic enough to cut through it would be  _ possible _ . Buuuut, Tar Pit’s cell would be my second best bet, if I didn’t get tossed into a blank which is my definite best bet because it’s just a regular prison cell but bigger. Girder’s is all made for...I think by these specs, someone made of metal?”

“Yup,” Leonard answered, popping the p again. “So, why Tar Pit’s cell?”

“Sure, it’s made for holding a giant guy who looks like he’s made of hot tar, but that gives me some wiggle room if they threw me in there for some reason. It’s all resistant to melting, but maybe...maybe I can do something with cutting? Since tar's not sharp, it's all gooey, so they wouldn't be expecting it.” She looked down, examining the specs again before looking up at him. He nodded. “I make a cutting shiv, maybe by pulling out some spare metal or using my prison pay — which I request some to be in change because coins have potential to be useful pocket-sized screwdrivers. I use a coin or two or five to unscrew a big nail or something, make that into a shiv, and stab through the grate on the plumping here and get out through the plumbing system. They can’t put motion sensors down there because of all the moving water and waste, camera system is loose again due to budget cuts. It’s not a national prison, so there’s less federal money in it and this little pocket of the Midwest doesn’t have a local billionaire pumping money into it like Bruce Wayne and Arkham. Or how Central now has Bat-funded Rogues.”

“You’re still bitter we’re on Batman’s payroll,” Leonard replied, raising an eyebrow at her as he rested his chin on the back of his chair.

She snorted, putting both hands on the table. “Yeah, a little. Whoever is behind him could help more people than I can imagine with the amount of money they have. They could fund so many teams like they do the Rogues and Batman and God knows who else. Help so many petty criminals who just didn’t have a choice in how they were gonna feed their family. Invest money in small places, small people. But...they don’t.”

“Or you don’t see what they’re doing and thus don’t know,” Leonard replied. “One person against the world isn’t going to cut it, even if they’re loaded with cash. Cash talks, but it doesn’t always buy people enough to make a huge change like you’re thinking. Hell, sometimes me buying a case of beer backfires on me because the date on the pack is faulty and then I gotta deal with all the shit that drinking expired beer. Mostly it tastes like dog water, but I digress.”

“See that all sounds like dogshit to me, but whatever. I’m not gonna debate on this since I don’t feel like it,” Theo replied, having had that debate many times with her stepmother and not wanting to continue that pattern of arguing financial philosophy with parental figures. Even if Leonard wasn’t really a father figure and was more of a bother figure. “I’m just...frustrated, is all. I’m not gonna rip you a new one because it’s your team and your life and you’ve been nice enough to take me in, even if you do have an ulterior motive of getting bonus cash out of having me as a sidekick.”

“One, if I don’t have five ulterior motives with something than you can safely assume that I’m being mind controlled or blackmailed into doing something,” Leonard drawled. “Two, we are  _ not _ calling you my sidekick. It feels...tacky.”

“Says the man who runs around in a parka and snow goggles,” Theo quipped, swallowing down an ugly feeling of rejection. Hiding behind quips was something she could do. When fired at, shoot back was a lesson she learned in preschool.

“I use a cold gun, kid, I’m practical,” he replied. “I am not gonna give myself any degree of frostbite in that suit.”

“Speaking of which-”

“Gambi hasn’t called me, which means he’s still working on your new suit. Even if it was  _ somehow _ by some  _ miracle _ ready, you’re not going into active duty with that shoulder until the doctor says it’s healed,” Leonard replied. “So you’re gonna have to do mind puzzles with me and do low physical activity until you’re at 100%. I know it sucks, but that’s the rules.”

“Y’know,” Theo replied, “I keep hearing these Rogue rules and being a Rogue now-”

“We have rules, that’s pretty standard for a group,” he replied, “they’re needed to function.”

“Ha. Ha,” Theo deadpanned. “But what  _ are _ the rules? I know no killing unless necessary, pun as thy wilt-”

“Alright, this is one Rogue rule that is especially important for you,” Leonard answered, “Rogues aren’t allowed to do martyr plays. Protect each other, sure, but no throwing themselves in front of guns for each other. Just take out the damn gun.”

“Didn’t have the mental endurance for that, personally. I was already running thin on making sure the whole warehouse was shut down as much as I could,” she replied, “and Weather Wizard’s made it clear that he’d rather I take a shot than you. So, did what I had to do to save a life, which is a Theo rule. Oh! And I wasn’t a Rogue at the time, you were just heavily interested in recruiting me.”

Leonard gave her a  _ look _ , bunched up eyebrows and narrowed eyes and a hint of a smirk on his face. “I am not gonna inflate your ego by discussing that.”

“Mmmmhmmm.” She hummed. “Wait.” She made a car swerving sound with her mouth. “Subject change. Lisa has been hinting at high school starting up again.”

Leonard barked a laugh, his hint of a smirk growing into a very real smirk. Theo felt the sticky anxiety in her throat clear up, glad he found that funny. She discreetly kicked her ankle for wanting his approval so much. She was a strong independent fourteen year old who needed zero adult approval. Absolute zero.

“Keystone High School started their term on August 8th,” he replied, “but you’re signed up to transfer about a week from now, when hopefully your situation will be settled down.”

Theo groaned, threading her fingers into her hair with her right hand. “Are you kidding me-”

“Wasn’t my call. It was either public high school or the League would’ve sent a homeschool teacher for you.” Leonard snickered at her scrunched nose. “Yeah. Didn’t think you’d like that much better.”

“Didn’t see you as the type of guy to just...roll over to the League,” she replied. She narrowed her eyes. “What’s your other motive?”

“Piper is also going to be starting there soon,” he replied, “once the legal mess dies down. He wants to graduate high school, so Mick and Sam want to support him by putting him in. Probably going in around the same time as you. I don’t like the idea of him being alone out there.”

“Why? He seems to be alright,” Theo replied. “A little quiet, sure, but he’s smart and he’s got a mouth on him. I mean, if you make the mistake I did and mix up Beyoncé and Rihanna with him in the same room, which in that case that mouth of his can be  _ brutal _ . Which was still a mistake on my part, I thought Beyoncé was the one behind Pon de Replay, so brutality accepted.”

Leonard sighed deeply, running a hand over his hair and standing up from his chair. “I’ll remind you that he’s gay. Gay in an American midwest, white dominated high school, where he’s just gotten out of a bad home situation that abused him because he’s gay. For other things too, but mostly because he was gay and that was a problem to  _ fix _ for his parents rather than just another regular thing about their kid.” Leonard frowned. Theo liked to think he was trying to plan how to trap Piper’s parents in a big freeze without anyone figuring out that it was him behind it. “He’s got a big mouth on him and that’s not going to go well with traditional high school bullshit. The last thing I need is him getting himself hurt because he’s got a homophobic asshole on him. Historically, Piper taking on someone bigger than him by himself has never gone well.”

“Aw, you do care,” Theo teased, adjusting her lean against the table. “Is the other motive casing the high school?”

“Possibly, but not for the reasons you’re thinking.” Leonard waved off her questioning eyebrows. “It’s a JIC plan.”

“JIC?” She asked.

“Just in case,” he answered. “Anyways, knowing you and your intense need to punch goodness into people you mark as bullies, you’re already probably gonna raise hell, so you might as well raise hell to back him up if he needs it.”

“Sounds fair,” she replied. “Oooooh, does this mean I get to know his out of costume name?”

“If he wants you to know it, probably,” Leonard replied. “We’ll see. He probably will come out of his shell eventually, he almost certainly just wants to make sure that you won’t make a big deal out of who he is. Hell, you’re both gonna be adopted legally, so you both might as well stick together, be buddy-buddy with each other.”

Theo felt her throat tighten. “Oh yeah...I forgot my stepmom disowned me and none of my dad’s family wants anything to do with me.” She looked down at the blueprint, now wishing that they could go back to discussing prison break out strategies. She’d been trying to ignore those facts by throwing herself into the flashy life of being a superhero. She wasn’t sure what to think or how to feel that the Justice League (gods among mortals), that the Rogues (a group of now mostly ex-criminals), that Leonard (Captain fucking Cold) was pressuring her to remember that she was a person and not just a manifestation of justice incarnate. 

Life was easier, when she could just go out and run through the city like the pain of her stepmother disowning her for being a freak after her incident wasn’t there or that her father’s side of the family never wanted anything to do with her since they thought she and her mother were responsible for her father’s death. They didn’t believe her when she said a green blur killed her father, blaming it instead on her “gold-digging” mother. But they were wrong. About the way her father died down to her mother being a golddigger. No, Theo's mother was just a bitch that appeared and disappeared whenever she liked, never doing much to help like some kind of stereotypical black cat. She was an absentee, negligent mother, but not a murderer.

Leonard’s voice brought her back from her thoughts. He was rambling, a nervous habit she’d noted whenever she poked at something that he was thinking too much about. Heatwave or Mirror Master usually cut him off during it (their methods of cutting Leonard off being how she knew he rambled when he thought too much about something. Mick’s blunt attitude was probably the most security-granting aspect of her new life, with how he’d just shed light on everyone and everything. Like a big candle), but Theo didn’t think she had the social privilege to interrupt him while he was rambling, so she usually let him keep going when the other two weren’t around. 

“And to get you registered in a school, you gotta have a legal guardian,” he stated, huffing. She swore she could hear him grumbling about the stupid Justice League, but not anything beyond that.

“Who’s gonna be my legal guardian?” she asked, looking up at him. He had his back turned to her, his big fuzzy parka hood laid down across his shoulders and hiding any fraction of a glimpse at his face that she could’ve gotten.

“We’re...we’re working that out,” he answered. “Sam’s gonna have a hell of a time as is getting Pipes under his legal care and getting Mirror Apprentice labeled as his legal family member. Rory was all for being Pipes’s legal guardian, but the likelihood of a guy with an extensive record of pyromania getting a kid under his care...even with the super lawyers the League’s letting us borrow, that would be a fight that wouldn’t be worth it. So he couldn’t be your guardian either. Lisa could do it, since she’s got no actual criminal record, but she’s not exactly the mom type and while she’s said you’re a good kid, she doesn’t want kids.”

“Gives off the classy wine aunt vibe, given that she called herself Auntie Lisa when I first met her,” Theo replied, slowly walking around the table towards him. “I’m gonna have to veto Weather Wizard being my legal guardian.”

“He’s barely not a kid himself, wouldn’t even consider it,” Leonard answered. “Kid can barely take care of a goldfish. ‘Sides, he’s still pissy about the hero gig as is, I’m not gonna inflate his temper tantrum by putting you under his care again.”

“So that leaves...you,” she replied, reaching his end of the table and looking up at him. He was staring off into space, staring a hole into the silvery trophy behind a glass case behind the counter in the basement. It was the tensest Theo had ever seen Leonard...no, not tensest. This was him closing off. It had to be, he was clamming up. She hummed, taking her eyes off of his grizzled face and following his stare more closely since the conversation seemed to dry up. Theo figured, the rough (frustrated?) way he was biting into his lower lip, he wasn’t going to talk more on the topic.

Theo let the silence drag on for a few moments, pretending like she didn’t notice him looking at her from the corner of his eye or how he’d tap his finger against the table as if to smash a thought of his he didn’t like. 

She squinted her eyes. “Is that...is that the fucking Stanley Cup?”

He smirked. “Maybe.” His jaw was loosening a little, so she pressed onwards.

“That’s been missing for fourteen years, what the  _ fuck _ ?” she squawked, grinning. She was a little relieved at that breaking the silence. Only a little. “It’s one of hockey’s biggest mysteries! I thought that looked familiar, I couldn’t put my finger on it, Leonard,  _ what the fuck _ ?”

“When the Central Combines win, I’ll hand the trophy over,” he answered, snickering under his breath. “For now, it’s a good personal trophy. I was the one that stole it fourteen years ago. I’d been Captain Cold for six years and I was using some mostly clean funds to go to a game. Then, fucking Turtle shows up and crashes the game. Literally.” He shrugged. “So, I used the cover of Flash fighting the guy to steal the Cup. Was gonna hand it over if the Combines won in the rescheduled game. They didn’t win, so I’ve just been keeping it safe all these years.” Leonard snorted, closing his eyes as if remembering the set up around the cup. 

She was imagining red lasers surrounding everything, buff guys glued to a glass case. But the way his eyes were  _ warm _ when he opened them, she thought that was probably a false assumption on her part. Leonard reminded Theo her old cat, Balthazar, back from when she was small, of that time he (her cat) was profoundly proud of finding a treat right under his face. She bit the inside of her cheek to stop from grinning as that warm, proud look slid over to her, lazily. 

As if sensing her thoughts, he said, “Their security was lousy.”

“Huh.” Theo tilted her head to the left. “I won’t tell anyone that you have the MIA trophy if you fish out another Iron Heights blueprint. The prison break out puzzles are growing on me.”

He snorted, walking over to the counter and pulling out another blueprint. It looked like they had recycled wine holding cabinets to work like old libraries, honeycomb sections all holding different blueprints. He fished one out and brought it over to the table, laying it out like a table runner.

“Tell me whatcha see here, kid.”


	2. 220 K

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lisa Snart: America's Sweetheart

####  **Central City, MO** **  
****September 8, 2014**

Theo paced around the living room, eyes glued to the TV screen. 

The living room was clean enough, for the living room that housed eight eccentric and rowdy people on any given day: the tile was good and clean, the yellow throw rug had obviously seen better days but it was holding out alright (even under the assault of Theo’s swift pacing), and the brown leather couch and chairs were comfortably worn in. 

Lisa sat on the couch, laying on it like a caricature of Cleopatra as she twirled a finger around a strand of her golden hair. “Jeez, I thought Lenny was bad when you were out cold, kid, but I’m starting to see a resemblance,” she replied.

“I’ve known him for less than a month. I don’t think I could grow to resemble him that quickly,” Theo drawled, biting back pride at being compared to Leonard.

Lisa snorted. “I think you could if you respected him as much as you obviously do. I don’t think I’m far off the mark when I say that you emulate my brother as much as you can get away with without him noticing.”

Theo sputtered, “I do not  _ emulate _ him.” She cleared her throat. “I just...yeah, I respect him, that’s kind of expected when you have a mentor-mentee relationship, I respect him because I can learn a lot from him.”

“Uh huh,” Lisa replied, watching Theo as she paced in front of the TV. “So I didn’t see you trying on parkas at the mall when we were getting you clothes.” Theo’s head snapped to look at Lisa over her shoulder, her eyes widening. “You were cute, muttering ice puns to yourself while pretending to shoot an imaginary cold gun.” Lisa formed a finger gun with her left hand, aiming it right at Theo and  _ chirped _ , “Pew!”

Theo’s face flushed all at once, she was bright red all the way to her ears. “...please don’t tell anyone about that,” she whined. “Nobody would ever let me live it down. Ever.”

“My lips can be sealed for the small, small price of five dollars and talking to me instead of pacing a hole in my rug.” Lisa held out her hand, the motion precise like the flicking of a switchblade.

Theo tore out her wallet and tossed it in Lisa’s direction before flopping onto one of the chairs. She scooted up to the edge of the chair’s cushion, biting her lip. She tapped her foot a few times, watching a news report about new elections for prison reform policies. She finally snapped, words flooding out of her mouth, “I’m worried about them, out there. This is the third time they’ve been called out by someone, the first that the Captain’s been called out specifically. Last time it was a guy with explosive boomerangs. I know Captain Boomerang is usually a bit of a joke in this city, but he seemed more dangerous than I’d ever heard, like he went through killer training montages while he was away from Central. By the time I stopped laughing at the news report, I saw Trickster get thrown across the screen and knocked out. I can’t help but feel like if I’d been out there, I could’ve disarmed the boomerang thrown at him so Trickster could’ve just caught it and laughed at the guy because that Captain Boomerang guy is usually a  _ joke _ . I feel all cooped up in here, when I feel like I could be out there and helping.”

“Doing what? Waving your hands and wincing every time you extend your shoulder too far?” Lisa replied. “Or by tearing open your stitches and having the team have to run you back to the hospital?”

Theo looked down at her hands. “I just...I feel so helpless.”

“Yeah, that’s how I felt when Lenny kept me on the sidelines too,” Lisa replied. Theo looked over to her, surprised. Lisa smirked. “You think my brother was the only one in that game? No, I was Golden Glider for years. I was never caught. I raked in good money, being Golden Glider and being one of the Rogues.”

“Why’d you quit?” Theo asked, twisting around in her chair to look at her. Trying to keep her facial expression respectfully owlish instead of letting the burning question of why the fuck Golden Glider disappeared show. “It sounds like you were really good at it and the Rogues is kind of a total boy’s club. Why quit?”

Lisa’s smirk fell. “Lenny...back in 2010, a lot of us were split up. I was laying low, Sam and Mick were in jail, and...we didn’t have Pipes yet, but the other kiddos were either lying low themselves or unable to pop out. My brother was alone and when he was contacted about a possible team up job, he snapped it up because he knew there was no way he was going to be able to hit anything in Central with both Flash and Kid Flash more or less in the city and him on his own. He had no way to breakout Mick and Sam without the kids, but the kids weren’t around for a clusterfuck of reasons.” Lisa sighed, running a hand through her hair. “So the job goes like this: he’s supposed to get himself caught on a certain date, then he gets himself sent to Belle Reve via bad attitude. Then the real job started: breaking out of Belle Reve.”

“Isn’t that the supposedly unbreakable federal jail?” Theo asked.

Lisa nodded. “That damn place. Someone was backing a bunch of ice villains to break out of Belle Reve. While Lenny was there, I think he got messed with by one of the prison psychs. He comes back, blathering about how he was a failure of a leader and a brother the next time I see him. Sam, Mick, and I all sat down, we had to figure out what the hell to do with him. We even talked to the  _ Flash _ , trying to figure out what the hell went down since it was a bunch of baby heroes who stopped the breakout, baby Flash knew the baby heroes, and Len was tight-lipped on all the details. I stepped out of the game so he’d have breathing room. I could go back anytime I want, especially now that we’ve got ourselves Bat-bucks and no risk of jail.” She shrugged. “But I kind of like being a role model for little people and teaching them how to ice skate. They give me the adoration I deserve.”

“You backed out because you knew his overprotective brother-ness was gonna mix bad with whatever funk he was in?” Theo asked, raising her eyebrows and tilting her head.

“Yep,” Lisa answered, popping the p. Definite family resemblance there. “He couldn’t force me out of the game if he tried and he did  _ try _ when I first showed up.” Lisa waggled her eyebrows at Theo. “He eventually sighed and gave in and fixed me up with my skates. Anyway, back in 2010, Lenny didn’t force me to quit, but I was worried about him. We all were. He’s...he  _ was _ in a funk ever since then, laying low, doing smaller jobs, like he didn’t trust himself out there. He trusted us, let the others run their own raids, but he was always...surprised when anyone got back. He started listening to Sam more, started to help out the younger kiddos with their gimmicks. Then you come into the picture and my brother’s spouting out how many seconds this window and that window is gonna have for this person and that person to do something and thinking  _ big _ again. Sam texted me when he first started noticing it.” Lisa snorted. “Scudder should not be allowed to have access to emojis.”

“Yay, I’m the magic fairy solution to whatever the shit the problem was,” Theo deadpanned. “I sure as hell don’t feel like it.”

“Has he been growly with you?” Lisa asked. “He does that, gets really snappy when he-”

“No, he’s just...I’ve talked with him enough that I think I can see when he clams up on purpose,” Theo answered. “I...we started talking about who was gonna be my legal guardian and he just...he says repeatedly that I’m not his sidekick, clams up about being my guardian, frames everything in a way that makes me feel like...he just wants me around because he gets cash out of me. I’m a combo tax break and a pay bonus. I feel like he only cares if I learn because it reflects good on him.” Theo looked down at her hands in her lap, biting her lip and closing her eyes in an attempt to try not to cry.

Lisa sighed deeply. Theo heard the couch shift, then felt gentle hands on her shoulders. She opened her eyes, wiping the tears from them, and looked up to see Lisa smiling at her.

“Theo, I know my brother. He’s just being an idiot,” Lisa replied. “Like you said, it’s only been a couple of weeks. Not even a month. He cares about you, just like he does all of us Rogues when we first join up. That’s why he fusses about your physical therapy and not letting you out there: he wants to give you the best chance you can get to  _ impress _ him and get under his skin. I think you’ve just had a hard time before being a Rogue and nobody showed you a lot of kindness, then my big lug of a brother showed you a pinch and you don’t know what to do with it.”

“I...yeah,” Theo replied. “I...I don’t know if I should expect more or just...I’m so confused about where I stand with him. Everyone else makes it easy: Wizard makes it clear he hates my guts, Pipes is friendly, Axel is...well, they haven’t changed at all since I met them beyond leaving me packs of M&M’s in weird places.” She clenched her fists, hitting the side of the chair with one and holding the other over her stomach. “A-and Mick teases me and shoots the shit with me sometimes, Sam gets me books and talks to me about science things, Evan helps me through my physical therapy, you are the Saint of Wine Aunts everywhere, but...I...” She trailed off.

“You don’t have to keep going if-”

“I don’t know with the Captain,” Theo replied, holding a pacifying hand up to Lisa to wave off her concern about pressuring her to talk. Theo was riding the emotional release of  _ venting _ for what felt like the first time and she was gonna go until Lisa made her stop or until the emotions were all  _ gone _ . “Where I stand with your brother...I don’t know. It’s all...floaty. I like working in binaries, kind of...truth tables! I like truth tables. If person feels this way, they act appropriately. Everyone else  _ does _ that, with me. I’ve got my anxiety with them, but it’s anxiety I can  _ deal _ with without feeling like I’m gonna implode most of the time. With Leonard...there’s no table. The minute I start to figure out a foundation to a table, I get new data and I have to throw it out the window.” Theo uncurled the fist she slammed against the chair, using it to rub her good shoulder. “I feel like I can read him, or I’m starting to at least, but...I don’t understand the data. And I feel like I’m overthinking everything and I get wound up in a feedback loop until I’m seeing whatever my anxiety makes me  _ think _ I’m seeing bad things out of him and I just...” Theo sighed, rubbing her eyes with a hand. “I just want to know where I stand so I can stop being anxious. Stop being as anxious, I mean, it’s not like my anxiety is just going to suddenly poof with a good conversation, but...he’s my mentor. I feel like I should be able to easily dial down the anxiety static around him, not feel it dial up. I kick myself a lot, when I notice that I’m getting happy every time he gives me approval because I feel like it’s just going to be taken away...”

Lisa let her trail off a moment, gently rubbing her shoulders before she removed her hands. Theo looked up to see her sit on the chair proper, behind Theo. “Y’know, you remind me of this one kid I give lessons to,” Lisa replied, crossing her legs and smoothing out her metallic gold skirt. “His dad doesn’t give him the time of day. His mom is suffocating to him. She’s a nice lady, don’t get me wrong, I love her pies, but she’s just...always in this kid’s face. Between her and the dad, the kid just...doesn’t know how to socialize. Great skater, he’s got the roots for something great in him. Felt like he had to keep himself secret, put on a happy face that I swear he directly cloned from his happy 1950’s mother. He just...broke down one day. Started crying because I gave him a hug after he managed to do a twirl without falling. Asked me, sobbing, a bunch of questions that made me see myself in him.” Lisa sighed, running a hand over her hair. “Without going into too many details, Len and me...we didn’t have a good time before we were Rogues too. It took us a long time to get this functional and we’re still dysfunctional, y’know? So don’t pressure yourself to move fast or to meet some kind of standard. It’ll ruin your twenties once you get there.”

“I’ll remember that,” Theo replied, looking back over at the TV screen.

Lisa let Theo have the silence of staring at the news station a moment. Justice League announcements, updates on this or that world crisis, but nothing on the Rogues or Central. Theo sighed, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples. No news was good news, right? Maybe it was just a quiet clean up that didn’t escalate to a fight for the news to cover...but she knew someone else who would cover it. She sprang up, feeling Lisa’s eyes follow her as she ran upstairs. She grabbed her laptop, running back down and retaking her position. Theo opened up the laptop, going into her bookmarks and opening a page.

“Oh thank God they updated their UI,” she muttered, opening up the tracker panel (which was thankfully tastefully minimalistic instead of a badly rendered CGI mirror from some old game from the 90’s). Theo fell back into old habits, using her powers as a shortcut to hack into the site faster. She lost herself in it as she typed, muttered to herself, and brought up camera feeds. Her shoulders relaxed. “They took out Girder, the guy who called them out, an hour ago. They’re just patrolling now,” Theo replied with a sense of finality.

“Good to know,” Lisa replied. “Better question is why you’re familiar with a Rogue...fan website? And why you have the username Kid...underscore cold. With a k, where I’m pretty sure, cold doesn’t have a k.”

Theo flushed bright red again. When did Lisa get behind her? “...okaaaaaay, you have to promise not to tell anyone. You tell anyone, I’ll erase all the pictures on your phone. Especially the swimsuit file, which no, I haven’t looked through, but I assume is important given you hid it under several other picture file categories-”

“Theo, I think whatever you’re gonna tell me is gonna extend my life by thirty years, it’s gonna pay for itself,” Lisa replied, grinning.

“So um...I’m a nerd.” Theo fanned her fingers across the keyboard before closing her laptop. She tapped her fingers along the backside of the monitor in a rapid fashion, swallowing some spit. “In my spare time, I’ve always...gone to weird forums and blogs and discussion spaces about weird stuff.” 

She took a deep breath, her anxiety acting up like aggressive TV snow in the back of her head from her talking about her interests that weren’t being a superhero or a techie. Theo still could hear her stepmom’s and Winters’s mocking words about it all. She took a deep breath, deciding to trust Lisa. 

Theo kept her eyes on her laptop, rambling quickly, “Alien sightings and collections of stuff we know about aliens and what they’ve shared with us, discussions about video games and how to break them.” She paused, looking over her shoulder at Lisa. “...y’know...nerd stuff.”

“Nerd stuff,” Lisa echoed, raising an eyebrow. She didn’t  _ seem _ like she was going to burst out laughing and make fun of her, so...good start. “Okay. How does that feature the Rogues?” 

Theo took another deep breath, looking up at the ceiling. “I forget how I ended up there, but um...at one in the morning one night about...oh holy fuck, that’s embarrassing.”

“What is?” Lisa asked. 

“This all happened about two years ago now and I’ve been like this ever since,” Theo answered, her ears flushing red. “I found myself on a cape website. One of those sites that discusses heroes like the Justice League and villains and stuff. I avoided the bigger threads, like the whole discussion on why superheroes have this fashion thing of wearing underwear-looking shit on the outside and rating all the supers in the world on their own rating system, and I dove into some of the more...less talked on threads.” She looked over at Lisa again, who was watching Theo like she was a puzzle coming together. “I come across a thread discussing ice villains and why there’s so many of them, right?”

Lisa hummed, smiling a bit. “There  _ are _ a lot of ice villains. It’s stylish.” 

“It’s pretty cool,” Theo chuckled, feeling like with every part of this confession a weight was coming off of her shoulders. “I read through a couple replies and they’ve got stuff like community-made criminal records to go through and I go through them, y’know because it’s one AM and I’m really cozy in the weird rabbit hole of trivia knowledge I’ve found with the thread. After going through like...five pages of discussion, I start getting that special kind of one AM irrational angry that they’re arguing that Captain Cold is the weak link of the bunch. I get angry when people all pile on hate on one person or character or thing, it’s weird. I mean, with people it makes sense, I don’t like bullies, but it’s not like Cap was going to get bullied by random strangers on the Internet...I mean, I  _ guess _ if he somehow found the thread and read it, might fuck with him on some level, but I dunno? It doesn’t seem likely.”

“The only time my brother uses the Internet is for Amazon orders and reading the news,” Lisa replied. “We’ve been trying to get him to accept Netflix into his life, but no luck.”

Theo snorted. “That...that sounds entirely in line with what I’ve seen. Anyway, I make an account on the website and, once again because it’s that time of the night and my brain functioned really well at one AM at an underdeveloped twelve, I call myself Kid Cold. But that name is taken, so I thought it was a good solution to substitute a K in there and just... _ it stuck _ on me, okay? I’m just glad it wasn’t triple x’s at either end of it, at least I had that much class.” She paused, biting her lip. 

“What next?” Lisa sounded like she was on the metaphorical edge of her seat, excited to hear what could come next.

Theo sputtered, “I um...wrote out a jumbled mess of a reply about why Captain Cold deserves to be there, hastily researching the board’s rating system and arguing why labeling him as a Tinker 3 is wrong-”

“So, so what I’m hearing-” Lisa replied, near bursting with laughter. No, near  _ vibrating _ with laughter. Theo’s heart plummeted and she tried not to tear up. “-is that you’re a  _ fangirl _ . Of my big brother. Who is now your superhero mentor. Oh my GAWD-”

“I am not a  _ fangirl _ !” Theo squeaked, clenching her fists so hard she could feel her stubby fingernails sink into her palms. “It was one AM and I was in the mood to argue and I just chose your brother’s hill to metaphorically stake my Internet dignity to die on!” She sighed, running a hand through her hair a moment to try to calm herself and thinking. “Though...the rest of the story probably won’t convince you of that. At all.”

“Theo, this is the first time I’ve ever met a fan of my brother’s that wasn’t out to try to steal from him, let me have this sisterly pride,” Lisa replied. Theo’s eyes widened. Oh. That’s why she was laughing: benign amusement at the idea that her older brother has a honest to God fan. Not laughing at Theo, not mocking her, just...bubbling with amusement at the whole situation. “...and also possible later blackmail. That I won’t connect to you at all because of your blackmail on me.” Lisa jokingly glared at Theo a moment, who smirked. “My brother taught you well.”

“No, that’d be the Internet,” Theo quipped. “Leonard says I don’t get to learn his blackmail secrets until I’m 18, so he won’t be held fully accountable for any blackmail I do.”

“So, so go on, kid.” Lisa motioned with her hand, rotating her wrist quickly. “What next?”

“I quickly sort of...well, I’m pretty sure there’s a behavior pattern that describes exactly what happened, I was...kind of a textbook example,” Theo replied, sheepish still at laying this all out. “I was labeled as the Captain Cold expert, since I managed to guess, at one AM, Captain Cold’s MO that was confirmed when he started shouting shit at the pigs. So I get this rep as the Captain Cold expert and I get messages from people who want to fight my established position about Captain Cold being a respectable villain, power level wise, and because I liked arguing with people on the Internet before my incident getting the key on my back, I kept it up because I didn’t want to prove those assholes  _ right _ by having who they thought as the Captain Cold expert  _ surrender _ .”

“Extending my life,” Lisa giggled, not even bothering to hide her laughter, “by  _ fifty years _ , this is so precio-” 

Theo cut her off, a mixture of elated from positive attention and highly embarrassed. For reasons she didn’t quite understand, she continued, “ _ Eventually _ , every time Captain Cold did  _ something _ that got him noticed, I’d end up getting messaged about it. I then started using that information to um...well, I would’ve called it defending his honor at the time, but it was a forum in the middle of metaphorical Internet nowhere.” Theo bit her lip, trying to stop grinning. She felt  _ lighter _ , admitting all of this. “Accidentally, without ever intending to, I became a hub of Captain Cold information. So, my ego sufficiently swelled off of the attention I was getting because of him, I um...made a website.”

“You made a  _ website _ ,” Lisa guffawed, slapping her thigh. “A fan website  _ for my lughead of a brother _ -” 

“It was pretty badly coded, and I had to eventually hand off the head admin privileges to other people because of my incident, but I am more or less the founder of the Rogues’ Renegades, a fan website on all things Rogues. Which is the website you just saw.” Theo coughed, fiddling with the hem of her shirt with a hand. “Kind of why I wanted to know why you — Golden Glider you, I mean — quit. It was a mystery that nobody could figure out. I got info on other Rogues, sure, hacking into Central City cameras and stuff was easy when you knew what you were doing and nobody would look at you because you were twelve and in Seattle.”

“Oh, bless,” Lisa giggled, hiding her mouth behind her hand, “you were a pint-sized secret agent.”

Theo stuck her tongue out at Lisa, giggling herself. “I basically used my powers here and the work that they do on the Renegades site to speed up what I used to do for fun after school. It was...kind of a game, y’know? Tracking you guys down, figuring that nobody would ever catch me. I’d put fake information up there too, which is why I had to take a few moments and verify the information on the site because they still have that rule. If we gave out 100% correct info every time we had it, we’d just end up getting our fan favorites arrested and well...you guys weren’t  _ evil _ , just...trouble.” Theo coughed, looking up at the ceiling. “Unlike the Gotham baddy fan communities, we had standards.”

“Y’know, that explains a few things from the last year,” Lisa replied. “Here I thought it was cop stupidity, and it technically  _ was _ . Taking their leads off of a fan site rather than doing the work themselves, what a bunch of losers.”

“Yeah,” Theo replied. She shifted back and forth before gushing, “Since I’m in a sharing mood, I tried to go as Captain Cold for Halloween once. My stepmom hated it and made me change into a store bought Wonder Woman costume before I left the house, but I made my own Captain Cold suit. It wasn’t very good.”

“So help me God, I am making him get you a parka for Christmas,” Lisa replied, giggling. She was bubbling with obvious amusement, her whole body shaking from it, and it was infectious.

“You got me a parka when we were shopping,” Theo snickered, sticking her tongue out at Lisa  _ again _ . “It just hasn’t been cold enough for me to wear it.”

“Wear it anyway! Live the Oscar Wilde way, go for the aesthetic,” Lisa exclaimed. “If my brother does it, you can do it.”

Theo hummed. “I’ll think about it.”

“Sooooo...if you’re a nerd, then why haven’t you been included into the Pathfinder party?” Lisa asked. “Okay, wait, hold up. Do you  _ like _ my brother’s whole let’s go over blueprints of prisons until you can think of every break out strategy game?”

“It’s fun, once I figured out why he was doing it,” Theo answered without hesitation. “I like the strategy and putting together all the variables, plus arguing logistics with Leonard is fun  _ and _ educational.”

“Oh my God, you’re such a nerd,” Lisa snickered. “Okay. You know about Dungeons and Dragons, right?”

“I’ve...I’ve heard about it, but I’ve never actually played it before.” Theo bit her lip, averting her gaze. “That...that would require hanging out with people outside of class and I never really...did that before my incident. Sure, I’d go to protests now and then, but...” She trailed off, shrugging. “I was a little busy to be making friends there. You don’t exactly trade contact information with people that you’re only mostly sure aren’t undercover cops.”

“Okay, so, the boys all play Pathfinder, which is like Dungeons and Dragons, but more...it has all the nerdy details that Lenny and all them seem to love turned up all the way. I’d join in if they played second edition Dungeons and Dragons, but they said they wanna have a good time and not a heart attack,” Lisa replied, shrugging. “Their loss. I’m sure Lenny would love to teach you the rules and how to play.”

“I wonder why he hasn’t mentioned it to me,” Theo muttered looking back down at her hands, shoulders drooping. She bit her tongue so she wouldn’t speak the more depressing thoughts on her mind.

“Probably just slipped his mind,” Lisa replied. “He’s been in overdrive, adjusting everyone to this hero work. Wizard alone is enough work to keep him busy, on top of all the patrolling and adjusting the Rogues to the standards Bats has us on.”

“Yeah,” Theo sighed, letting the last syllable of her response melt into her sigh. “Yeah. I’ll try to keep what you said in mind. Thanks for letting me...spill all my feelings guts on you.”

“S’fine, kiddo,” Lisa replied, ruffling Theo’s hair. “Sounded like you needed it. You’ll just get a cleaning bill from me for all the gut stains.”

“Oh good,” Theo deadpanned, discreetly leaning into Lisa’s hand. “I’ll go from that empty wallet I tossed at you to having no wallet at all.”

Theo’s solid deadpan stare broke into a laugh as Lisa abruptly got up and plucked the empty wallet off of the couch. Her laughter got louder as Lisa plopped the empty wallet back into her lap.


	3. 150 K

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much, but proof that I'm alive and this story isn't dead.
> 
> Note for the Arbitrator sub-plot: Theo's arguing information based off of interviews given by Dan Garret as Blue Beetle. There was no where to put that into narration, since Dan's name isn't known to Theo at this point in the timeline. Jaime's also not operating as Blue Beetle yet.

Lisa moved around the house, now believing that Theo wasn’t going to pace a hole into her floor so she was trusted enough to leave her mostly alone. She sometimes made Theo lend a helping hand with a chore that she particularly didn’t like: mopping the tiled floors (“but do it gently! Lenny would kill me if I made your shoulder worse”) and doing dishes (“I swear it’s Mick’s turn to do these, but he’s just avoiding it now”). But Theo was, ultimately, left alone to her own devices.

She spent the time while waiting for the Rogues to get home checking her subscribed threads. 

At 7 PM, she was rolling her eyes and snickering under her breath about the fact that that Arbitrator guy was being an ass in her inbox now, saying things like how she shouldn’t knock what she doesn’t know for certain and being a mixture of vague and mildly threatening. She shrugged it off as someone not having anything better to do with their lives than to try to spread bullshit about superheroes (even though Blue Beetle said,  _ several times _ , that his scarab was magic that allowed him to be a superhero), popping over to other threads and popping her input on them. 

At 8 PM, she folded her laptop shut and took out the paper detailing her physical therapy exercises that she was supposed to do at home. She went through the motions, eyes locked on the doorway that lead to the front living room. How long would they have to patrol for? She had never been on a superhero patrol before with other people, what did it entail? Running around the city with a checklist, going “Yup, South and Barber’s street is clear, onto the next area”? She always found her crimes to stop by looking for alarms and observing things, is that how the Rogues were doing it? How Leonard would say to do it? Did Leonard look into the full context of things or go in swinging? Wait. This was Leonard “I must have a plan for everything” Snart. Of course he waited.

At 9 PM, she finally listened to her stomach and heated up some leftover Chinese food in the microwave. She made herself eat, even if eating wasn’t particularly something she cared for doing at the moment. At 9:30 PM, she opened one of the robotics textbooks that Sam left around for her and started wrapping her mind around the concepts in the book. 

At 10 PM, she asked Lisa if there was anything lying around the house that Lisa didn’t mind her taking apart and putting back together (not mentioning that she was planning to try to turn the bits into a robot gecko between those two activities). Lisa gave her a box of broken electronics from around the house and Theo set her mind to fiddling with all the parts. She managed to put the parts together to make a very satisfying gecko  _ statue _ , but couldn’t make it move. Maybe she was missing some motors? Could she substitute hydraulics for that instead? What was  _ even _ the difference between a motor and hydraulics?

She went back to the textbook at 11 PM, fixing every broken electronic to give her something to do with her hands and magic while she read. She gave Lisa the box back, biting back a grin of pride as Lisa’s eyes got wide at the fact she got all the electronics working again. Even the Q-phone that the Queen store said was dead. “Just a little fuzz in the charge port,” Theo had said sheepishly as Lisa ruffled her hair, internally mourning the currently dead music playing robot gecko. Someday, you’ll live, Manolo the Music Man-Gecko. Someday.

At midnight, Theo opened her laptop again and set herself up in the kitchen. She took inventory of the ingredients she had access to in the kitchen as Lisa bid her goodnight. Theo gave her a thumbs up as she looked at recipe websites, trying to figure out what she could make with what was laying around. She ended up making spaghetti, gently exercising her magic to set up the various heating settings on the stove so she’d be able to make the sauce and the noodles at the same time. She mused over her innate magic versus actual spells. Her tech magic came to her like a muscle, while spells she had to recite and think about. Maybe if she had access to spellbooks, she could train herself to the point where more spells could be like muscle memory. It was something to ponder while waiting for the ground beef in the saucepan to turn brown. She meticulously followed the few instructions that Hank’s Mom (the user behind the spaghetti she was cooking — she wrinkled her nose at Hank’s Mom’s description for the recipe as a “husband pleaser!” in cheerfully corporate Source Sans Pro font) left for her, glad she knew enough about cooking to patchwork the pieces of the recipe together. Without having set a timer, she knew when the hour was up for when the spaghetti was done simmering. She put a lid over the pan, muttering “meno  thalpó” to keep the food warm. 

At 1:25 AM, she pulled out seven plates and set them besides the pan. She hunted down the tupperware, also setting that out since she knew how picky Leonard was about saving leftovers. Theo went into the living room, curling up on the couch with her laptop to catch up on the Renegades website. She looked around, making sure that nobody was watching her before diving into a thread that had said something  _ wrong _ about Captain Cold (him being the Flash — what a  _ ridiculous _ concept). Old habits die hard. Or, in this case, not at all.

At 1:53 AM, she fell asleep on the couch, her laptop balanced on top of her ribs with her legs splayed out on the floor like wet noodles and her only technically being half on the couch.

At 2:13 AM, she stirred from someone moving the laptop off of her, groggily groaning while trying to open her eyes to see what was going on. But they refused to open. The traitorous shits. She fell back asleep as she could feel someone pick her up, sleepily resting her head against something fuzzy.

* * *

 

####  **Central City, MO** **  
****September 9th, 2014**

Theo woke up the next morning to the sound of drums and a flute playing downstairs. She wrote it off as Mick and Piper having a drum lesson, thankful this time that Piper remembered to keep the hypnotic technique out of this one. She wasn’t too fond last time, definitely not a fan of waking up in a hypnotic trance and dancing her way downstairs in her pjs. She sat up in bed, trying to remember when she got here. She shrugged, figuring she dragged herself upstairs when she was in a tired state. Theo rolled out of bed, getting dressed and heading downstairs.

“Hey Sleeping Beauty.” Mick nodded to her as she came down the stairs. He was on the couch with a drum kit in front of him, squinting as he looked at the music sheets in front of him. 

Piper was on a chair, his posture ridiculously straightened and  _ perfect _ in every way as his fingers moved gracefully along the flute. He didn’t have most of his costume on, but did have his hood and cape strewn along his shoulders. She felt bad that he felt like he had to hide around her, but wasn’t going to pressure him. 

Mick asked, “Did me and Pipes wake you up?”

“Eh, it’s...9 AM, I should be up anyway,” Theo answered, going for the kitchen. “How’re drum lessons going?”

“Alright,” he replied. Then both he and Pipes stopped playing in unison, Mick wincing. “I was off by a beat, wasn’t I?”

“I’m going to throw your words back at you, old man,” Piper replied, his voice turning ridiculously fond and warm. Theo moved about the kitchen nearby, pinching herself before she could get in a jealous, pissy fit. “You keep on moving along, most people aren’t even going to  _ know _ that you messed up. I actually wouldn’t have known if you didn’t point it out.”

“Huh.” She heard Mick hum. “Music’s damn hard, Pipes. Dunno how you do this  _ and _ the hypnotism gig at once.” 

She heard a shift on the chairs out there and tried very hard to ignore the laughter from the living room, grabbing a plate and looking for the bagels in the fridge. She noticed the spaghetti leftovers from the pot of spaghetti she made last night, tucked in the tupperware she set out. She smiled to herself, fishing out the bagels and the cream cheese. She sat on a stool at the counter, taking out a bagel.

Theo could hear Piper snort (which was a ridiculously short and soft snort). “Well you see, this stubborn old man with an absurd amount of burn scars told me-”

“I do not have an absurd amount of burn scars! I have just the right amount- no, the expected amount for my lifestyle!” She could hear Mick laugh. Do not look up, Theo, do not look up or they’ll notice you all watery and pathetic. Theo inhaled deeply, swiftly picking up the bag of bagels and sharply spinning the bag shut. She put it back into the fridge, exhaling slowly to try to calm down.

“Hey, Theo, you alright in there?” Mick called from the living room.

“Y-yeah!” She mentally cursed at her voice cracking a bit. “No problems here, completely fine! Fine as a lemon lime! Fine as a computer generated line, set at precisely one pixel! I am  _ that _ fine.” She wiped her face, making sure she wasn’t teary eyed.

“You sure?” Mick sounded less than convinced. Quick, Theo, Key face, Key face.

Theo shut the fridge, spinning around to walk over and lean casually against the counter. She gave what she thought was a lazy smirk and a thumbs up to a now standing Mick and Piper, who were both looking at her with different expressions: Mick with his eyebrows drawn up into a firm line to match the one his mouth was making and Piper with his head tilted to the side a bit and looking from her to the ceiling and back again. “We’re cool. Frosty.”

“Okay, kid. Stop flickering the lights and I’ll believe you,” Mick replied, slowly walking towards her. Theo looked up, finally noticing what Piper was looking at: the lights. They flickered on and off, their unpredictable pattern matching the slightly nauseous, anxious feeling pooling in the bottom of her stomach — the bubbling that she’d been ignoring. Her eyes widened and Theo stopped cut herself off from the lights — when had she connected to them to begin with? That was a scary thought. 

She looked down at her feet. “Sorry,” Theo muttered, running a hand through her hair. “I’m uh...sorry.”

“Hey,” Mick replied, “S’fine. Not the worst thing you could’ve done.” She could spot his feet shift. She looked up and saw him looking between her and Piper. “Tell ya what. I think we should have a little outing.”

“Cold says I’m not allowed-”

“On active patrols,” Mick replied. “I’m not talking about costume stuff. I’m talking us three going for a walk, maybe the arcade. Pipes-”

“If we’re going out,” Piper interrupted Mick, “then I’m Hartley.” He looked over at her, watching her closely as he took off his hood. He had thankfully messy brown hair (not everything about him could be perfect) and was as pale as what she’d thought were gloves on his hands, but now she realized that pale pink-white substance on his hands was his  _ skin _ . “Hartley Rathaway.”

Theo smiled, holding out a hand. “Theo Soliani.”

“Yes, I um...know that,” Hartley replied, looking at her hand. “Does that mean you knew?”

“Nope,” she answered. “Just felt fitting. Good first meeting with someone, trading names.” She slowly went to take her hand back, but Hartley took her hand with a small smile of his own.

“Makes sense,” Hartley replied. “So um...you’ve never heard of my family, have you?”

“Hart — can I call you that? — I am from Seattle. That is, colloquially speaking, far as fuck away,” Theo replied, letting go of his hand to gesture as she shrugged. “Unless your ex-family was Wayne or Queen famous, I wouldn’t have heard of them. If you’re expecting me to go all squeaky-squealy, I can leave the room and-”

“Please, no,” Hartley laughed. “I’m good. And sure, you can call me Hart.”

Theo felt her anxiety simmer back to the back of her mind. “Good. Because if you made me call you Hartley, I would’ve made you call  _ me _ Theophania and we’d waste so much time pronouncing all those syllables.”

“Oh no,” Hartley snickered, “wasting seconds on four more syllables, one for me, three for you.”

Theo wrapped her arm around Hartley’s shoulders, guiding him out the doorway from the kitchen. “It adds up, Hart. Like Starbucks bills.”

Mick looked at the two kids leaving, then back at the bagel sitting on a plate in the kitchen. He picked it up, biting into it as he followed them out.


	4. 125 K

They ended up going to the mall and excessively window shopping. And people watching. Theo buried her hands into the pockets of her parka, glad she took Lisa’s advice. The mall, apparently, was very high key in its air conditioning so she could get away with it without dying of heat. The parka’s weight gave her a sense of security and armor, which helped her to not replicate the events of the kitchen into the mall. That would’ve been awkward to explain to the Justice League: _“Hey, I have anxiety and apparently when I get particularly anxious, I sometimes make lights flicker. This can’t possibly go bad.”_

She watched as Hartley looked about the mall, the two of them perched at a food court table as Mick went about the food court buying anything from the stands that suited his fancy.

“You see him?” Hartley asked, nodding his head. “The redhead, in the green shirt and jeans?”

“Yeah?” Theo asked. “What about him?”

“He’s so wound up in his music that if you snuck up on him, you could get his wallet out of his pocket no problem,” Hartley replied.

“I’m not supposed to do that,” Theo replied. Hartley raised his eyebrows at her and she sputtered, “I mean. Pickpocketing. Stealing.”

Hartley snorted. “You can always give it back. It’s mostly just an art form here. Leonard hasn’t sat you down and taught you pickpocketing yet, has he?”

“We’ve been going over breaking out of jail,” she replied. “Which _can_ apply directly to what I’m supposed to know and do.”

“Oh?” Hartley asked. “What about if you’ve got to tail someone and you’ve got to lift the guard schedule of an evil fortress of doom from someone’s pocket? Or maybe keys? Needed to make a fake identity for the front company of the week? C’mon, get _creative_ , Theo.”

She hummed, steepling her fingers. “I’m thinking about it...and it _could_ be useful. Maybe. But I’d probably wanna learn from Leonard before trying it in public.”

“Why? You could show initiative and he’d be impressed,” Hartley replied. “Mick would probably be happy to show you the basics.”

“The basics of what, Clay Aiken?” Mick asked from behind them. He sat between them, setting down a platter with a lot of food. Hot dogs, a cheeseburger, some pretzels, and a bit of Chinese food, Mick looked set to eat for a while.

“Pickpocketing,” Hartley answered, “I showed her a potential mark and she went-” Hartley threw the pitch of his voice up into higher, squeakier notes “-I’m not supposed to do that, I’m on morally superior ground-”

“I did not say that second part,” Theo barked, crossing her arms and slouching into her chair. “S’just...not something I could see myself doing in the future. That’s all. Hartley already threw that idea out the window by pointing out otherwise.”

Hartley snorted, picking up a fry and holding it like a cigarette as he bit off the end. “So I figured you could teach her-”

“Even if I wanted to,” Mick replied, “which I would, I’ve already taught this squirt how to make a shiv, Lenny would get pissy and I don’t feel like dealing with it.” He took one of the three hot dogs and placed it in front of her on a napkin. “Love you, kid, but not enough for that.”

“What’d you mean, he’d get pissy?” Theo asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You’re _his_ project,” Mick answered, “that means anyone who teaches you their bad habits is gonna get an earful at least and a punch or two at most. Besides, pickpocketing? No one in our group is better at pickpocketing, solely pickpocketing and not using any fancy shit, than Leonard Snart.” He paused a moment in eating before giving both Hartley and Theo a stern look, his eyebrows strewn together. “If either of you tells him I said that, then I’m going to set every left sock of yours on fire.”

“Understood, sir,” Theo deadpanned and half-heartedly saluted.

Hartley waggled his eyebrows at Mick. Mick grumbled and gave him a soft pretzel from his tray. “Aaaaand my silence has been bought,” Hartley drawled, snickering under his breath before biting into the pretzel.

Theo picked up her hot dog, taking a bite out of it before looking over the food court. She hummed, hearing yelling behind her. It was a different tone of yelling than the rest of the food court, which made Theo weary. “Guys, I’m gonna hop into the security cameras real quick,” she replied, “think there might be some trouble stirring.”

“We’re not on the clock, why’s it our problem?” Mick asked.

“This isn’t something you do on the clock,” Theo answered. “Doing the right thing, you do it in and out of costume.”

Both of them raised an eyebrow at her and she sighed. “I’ll get a copy of the footage of you guys helping and you can send it in to try for a bonus?”

“There we go,” Mick answered. “See, that’s a sensible motivation.”

She rolled her eyes before closing them and dives with her mind into the mall’s wifi network. From there, she slips through the security ice like she was born there and slips into the camera network. Nothing on the second floor, but the first floor—the one with the food court they were sitting in—there is a girl trying to get out of the hands of a mall cop. Theo goes out of the system, back into her body.

She stood up, ignoring Mick and Hartley’s confused looks as she started to run. She stopped running a good ways away from the confrontation, panting softly as she observed the situation.

Mall cop, an older man who shared Mick’s stocky and muscular build, had his grip around a girl’s wrist. She had to be only a few years older than Theo, a young woman of color (dark brown skin, warm undertones) with frizzy hair in a short, dark brown afro. She was wearing a light grey hoodie with yellow highlights, with her stomach exposed and a winking smiley face on the chest of the hoodie, with a pair of blue jeans. It was a very comfy look and Theo internally applauded the look for a second before composing herself. She walked up, looking concerned.

“Excuse me, sir, what’s happening here?” She asked in her best PTA mom voice and having her hands in her parka’s pockets to hide their shaking and to keep herself from jumping into punching too early.

The two looked at her, both of them no doubt taking the appearance of her small stature clad in a black parka and khaki cargo shorts. The mall cop snorted. “None of your-”

“As a customer of the mall, I think all security issues should be held _transparently_ with the customers, so we know _if_ there’s an emergency,” Theo replied, drawling where appropriate in her best impression of Leonard’s voice. “Now, I could take my business elsewhere today and tell everyone I know that the Central Mall is dealing with a-” She made air quotes with a hand “- _situation_ today or you could tell me the truth _if_ it truly is no big deal.” Theo tried very hard not to crumple to all the attention she was dragging onto herself by intervening, keeping her breath even and channeling the hardest hard-ass she knew: Leonard.

The mall cop glared at her, still holding the young woman’s wrist. She was watching the situation, looking back and forth between them then into the distance.

“This young woman was reported by the retail clerk for suspicious behavior-”

“I was _browsing_ the aisle for something to make my dad feel better!” the young woman snapped, her eyes glaring _hard_ into the mall cop. “My dad is in the hospital with kidney failure, I wanted to buy him _something_ -”

“Don’t tell me your sob story,” the mall cop replied.

Theo was swiftly memorizing every detail she could about the man: his blond hair, acne scars on his white face, blue eyes, about two feet taller than her, his badge. She focused on his badge, noting it had the security company’s name over the officer’s name.

“Sir,” Theo replied, “maybe you should listen to her more-”

“Why, so she can try to steal-”

“Why are you so certain she’ll steal?” Theo asked, raising her voice to get more attention. Call attention to the injustice, make everyone feel uncomfortable. “She looks like an average person to me. She’s pretty, sure, but I don’t see anything about her that could indicate that theft is what she’s in a mall for and she says she’s here to buy things from the mall. Same as anyone else.” Theo tilted her head a little to the right, keeping the smirk off of her face as she noticed the mall cop’s face getting redder and redder. “Is it because she’s black?”

“No!” He snapped at the same time the woman yelled, “Yes it is!”

He sputtered angrily, “No, no it’s not-”

“Then what’s your proof?” Theo asked. “Do you know her name? Criminal history? Anything about her besides her appearance today?”

The mall cop looked around and growled, “That’s it! You’re both going to the security cell for shoplifters and I’m calling the cops!”

Theo felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up. There was Mick, jaw tense and squared with his eyes wide and _wild_. Theo swore she could see flecks of gold in Mick’s brown eyes, like a fire lit in the depths of them, but it was hard to tell at this distance.

“I’d like to see you try, _punk_ ,” Mick growled. “You know who I am, Vernon. You know what I do. You’re messing with a Rogue and Rogues-” He lightly gripped Theo’s shoulder, stepping closer to her to hover over her “-look out for their own.”

The mall cop—Vernon, apparently—paled and let go of the woman. “Ah...I um...my shift is ending-”

“Not yet,” Mick replied, letting go of Theo’s shoulder and grabbing her hand. He made a show of looking at her hand, slipping four earplugs into her hand, then moving past Theo. He put himself between Vernon and the young woman, Vernon letting go of the young woman shakily as Mick got closer. Theo moved closer to the woman, letting Mick shield them from Vernon and putting the extra set of earplugs in her hand. The woman watched, confused as Theo put hers in. Theo motioned for her to do the same and she finally did as Mick growled, “I think you should face the music.”

Theo led the woman out as she could very faintly hear music play over the intercom. She muttered, hopefully under her breath (it was hard to tell with the thick earplugs), “So _that’s_ where he went.”

* * *

“That guy’s always been a piece of trash,” Hartley replied, waving his finished popsicle stick like a band conductor’s wand. “Has been giving me grief about checking out guys my age since I stepped foot in there. Mick had a three strikes you’re out deal with him after a house visit and when Theo started standing up for you, that’s when it extended to the both of you. You each counted for a strike. I got my revenge, humiliating him low-key in his workplace and he’s sure to be a laughing stock.”

“That was great,” Lashawn—the young woman—laughed. “Oh man, that guy’s been getting me kicked out of the mall for _years_ since I moved here.”

“He seemed like an ass,” Theo replied, smiling. “Glad I stood up to him because you do not deserve that shit. Not with the whole dad thing. If that was my dad in your dad’s spot...I would’ve punched that asshole.”

“You have a dad, since when?” Hartley asked. “We thought you were a miraculous birth.”

Theo bit her lip, flushing bright red as she realized what she said and who she meant. “I mean...my biological dad died four years ago so I know what having a dad’s like.” She hoped that’d be enough to distract the teasing train enough to derail it.

Judging by how Hartley’s face fell, it was enough. Maybe overkill, looking at how Mick’s jaw tensed and Lashawn’s face fell. Theo winced internally.

“H-however my dad died through actual murder and not medical reasons, so I’m sure it’ll be okay for your dad,” Theo sputtered. “Y-you said you wanted to grab something for him at the mall, right?”

“Yeah,” Lashawn sighed. “I wanted to get him a book-”

“This book?” Theo asked, pulling a book out of the inside of her parka. The book’s cheery red cover sparkled in the sunshine, the golden lettering of the _Chronicles of Narnia_ shown cheerfully in the curling font.

Lashawn lit up. “Yeah! How- when- why-”

“Same way I knew you were in trouble,” Theo answered. “Little birdies told me. Paid for it, though I was tempted to shoplift with Vernon’s shift still going, then realized it wasn’t worth screwing over some poor retail worker.” She held it out to Lashawn. “Figured you could use a couple wins right now-”

Lashawn hugged her and Theo’s eyes went wide. She looked awkwardly over at Mick and Hartley, behind Lashawn’s back. Hartley mimed hugging back and Theo slowly did it while Mick rolled his eyes.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Lashawn let her go, grabbing the book. “He used to read this to me when I was sick, but our copy got trashed years ago, I...” She hugged the book to her chest. “Thank you.”

“S’no problem,” Theo muttered, blushing. “I like helping out, so don’t worry about paying me back you don’t have to.” She awkwardly pat Lashawn on the shoulder. “World is rough enough, might as well help out where I can.”

“Our Theo’s a little knight in a black parka,” Hartley joked, putting an arm around Theo’s shoulders and giving her a one armed hug. He lifted his arm when Theo winced. “Right, your stitches,” he grimaced.

“What do you have stitches for?” Lashawn asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Took a bullet for my adopted dad,” she replied. She realized what she said and knew she was gonna get shit for it later, but now the story was out and she didn’t want to seem like a liar to Lashawn. “We were in Gotham and y’know it gets rough over there. It grazed my shoulder, but unfortunately bullets hurt a lot more than TV would have me believe.”

Lashawn laughed, “God, you’re a little angel aren’t you?”

She probably meant it as a teasing statement and Theo knew it too, but she still felt too many negative emotions being referred to as an angel. Winters ruined that word for her. Theo put on her best impression of Leonard’s warm, lazy smirk to try to cover up any signs of her emotional state and drawled, “I’m more of a jerk with a heart of gold.”

Everyone laughed and Theo almost let herself pout. Almost.

“We’ll believe you’re a jerk, kid,” Mick snickered, “when you stop throwing yourself in the way of danger for total strangers.”

* * *

**Central City, MO** **  
** **September 10, 2014**

Theo woke up later that night (day? The clock reading 1:40 AM told her it was technically the next morning) to her laptop beeping. She groggily rolled over, opening it (fire risk be damned, she was too used to sleeping with her laptop in her bed. She’d panic without it there) and used her magic to get past her password page. She woke up a little more, sitting up when she saw the alert on her screen.

She had set up, through trial and error, a sort of...magically infused alarm system. It was one of the things she did while she was on the sidelines, remembering the magical theory of foci and attaching spells to them. That was something Winters _did_ bother to explain. So, she set up a magic network linked to hospitals and homeless shelters: if there was a problem there, her computer would act as the focus of the spell and tell her about it.

Theo raised an eyebrow, seeing that someone tripped the alarm at the Central City Hospital. She looked at the clock: 1:43 AM. If the pattern held up, the Rogues were patrolling on the other side of the city and slowly making their way home at this point. She had no way to contact them without waking Lisa and bothering her.

So she did what she thought was reasonable: she got up and got ready to go on a walk.


	5. 75 K

It wasn’t her first time, breaking into a hospital. The first time she did it, she was ten and desperate to see her father in the hospital (no one wanted her to see her father cut open with doctors trying to figure out how a heart was cut into tiny little pieces without an entry wound). This time was different: this was outside of visiting hours, she didn’t have as much of a baby face to pout and cry her way into the hospital, and no one very, very close to her heart was dying. And she was fourteen. And she was the maybe-sidekick of Captain fucking Cold.

That last thought helped her steel herself in her parka, standing on a building next to the large hospital building. She made sure not to stand on the edge, not wanting to be seen. She surveyed the hospital building, looking at people going in and out of the building.

She took a deep breath, running a hand through her hair. “It’s all distraction, then moving in when they’ve got their guard down,” she recited under her breath. “Okay. Okay, I can’t do donuts here. What _can_ I do?”

She thought, staring at the hospital and biting her lip. She tapped her thigh rapidly with one of her hands. Theo, think. What could you do here that’d work well enough? What could distract people from paying attention to a hospital? It was common practice, with Central at least, to have a token security force on the clock. They weren’t any more trained than your average mall cop and were just as much out of practice with a real fight, from what Evan had told her when they passed one of the officers on her way to check up for her shoulder. But they were still witnesses and it was probably for the best that she wasn’t spotted when she didn’t have a costume. So. Think, Theo.

“How does a snowflake float in somewhere without anyone spotting it?” She muttered, a grin breaking out onto her face. “Throw it in a blizzard.”

Theo made her way down the fire escapes into the alley, making her way to a 24 hour cafe. She used the last bit of the money Hartley had given her for the mall trip on iced coffee and a generous tip, drinking the cold, caffeinated, sugary mess as she sat down as close as she could get physically to where she could _feel_ the wifi router (through a wall, so this would be a stretch of her energy, but hopefully the caffeine could help push her through just enough to get this done and then maybe collapse as close to a Rogue safehouse as she could drag herself when she was done with all this). She opened a magazine she plucked up on her way to her seat, setting her body to look like she was intently reading before tapping into the cafe’s wifi.

She dives in, abandoning keyboard and commands in favor of traversing the local networks. There’s nothing on the cafe’s system that she would ever want: lonely college creative writing students, creepy people, and someone with a translator program and trying to order. Theo pauses a moment, helping the translator program along for the order. Then she pushes them all aside. She pushes herself to the edges of the cafe’s wifi to hop over to the nearby network of a jewelry store two blocks away from the cafe. It is closer to her mark, higher end, and a flashy target. She checks the cameras, smiling when she notices that no one is around. Theo makes the security network of the jewelry store effectively shit itself: putting false markers over the motion sensors, making case alarms think that the cases have been all broken, and putting false images in the cameras (pushing faded memories of fanart of Gotham villains into the store, making them move “on camera” and break the cases and doing a dance through where the motion sensors would sense. She smirks, knowing this would confuse the hell out of people investigating this). She slips out and back into her body, feeling exhausted, but energized enough to pull off what she had planned (in the loosest sense of the word “planned”).

She finished her coffee, letting that buoy her as she heard sirens. She walked towards the hospital, keeping to the other side of the street from the jewelry store as the police began to investigate. While they’re busy, while the staff of the hospital are looking on in tense anxiety and the citizens look out of their homes in exhausted concern, she walked around to the back of the hospital. She did a finger pistol and a wink at the camera by the garage, getting it to turn around as she sauntered to the garage door. This had to be where ambulances come and go and it was closed currently, so she probably had a few minutes at most until an ambulance rolled in from some other part of town. Theo touched the side of the door, willing it up and slipping in underneath it.

Once inside the hospital, it’d be easier for her to tap into the hospital’s security system, so she wouldn’t pass out preemptively in the hospital. Theo looked up, feeling the data from the security camera she messed with outside and followed the trail of it. She found the security room miraculously (frustratingly?) empty and she walked in.

Theo took a few moments to tap into the system, using her magic to enable the digital keyboard to type. Best to avoid fingerprints. Her eyes widened, recognizing who broke in.

It was Lashawn in the organ storage room. She had some sort of clipboard in her hand and a light colored domino mask over her face, but she was wearing the same clothes as Theo saw yesterday. Theo copied the footage onto a USB (always carry a USB, it’s just _handy_ for local technopaths), modified the original, and quickly left the security hub.

She let the security system guide her, following the data from the camera of that room. She opened the door quietly, whisper-yelling, “Lashawn?!”

Lashawn jumped, turning and holding out the clipboard in her hand like it was a weapon. She immediately dropped into only lightly guarded confusion (shoulders dropping to less tense, the clipboard returned to a proper position in her hand, eyebrows tightened together).

“Theo?” She whispered. “What are you doing here?”

“A little birdy told me that there was a break-in at the hospital,” she answered. “I didn’t think it’d be _you_.”

“How do you even-”

“Lashawn, you’re wearing exactly what I saw you wearing earlier today, but with a Halloween costume domino mask,” Theo answered in a whisper. “I may have only seen you for one meeting, but it’s not hard putting pieces together. Just because I can’t see your cheekbones really well doesn’t mean someone can’t recognize you.” She sighed, entering and closing the door. She locked the door. “Just bought us some time. _What_ are you doing here?”

“Proving you wrong? That I am a thief?” Lashawn offered. “I...I tried to give my kidney to help my dad, but...I got powers. Every time they knocked me out to try to take one of my kidneys, I’d teleport. So I thought...I could use my powers to speed up the process to find a kidney.”

“Right,” Theo replied, sighing. “Okay.” She held out her hand. “Give me the clipboard.”

“What?” Lashawn raised both eyebrows. “You can’t stop-”

“I’m not going to stop you, my powers will be more helpful, but I need to know what I’m looking for,” Theo whispered. “I can’t look blind.”

The tension leaked out of Lashawn. She had tears in her voice as she asked, “You’d help me?”

“You care about your dad, a lot,” Theo answered. “I’m not heartless. We’ve only got a couple minutes, c’mon!”

Lashawn gave her the clipboard with a shaky hand, probably still in shock Theo was helping, and Theo took it. Theo absorbed the data on the clipboard, making mental notes of what to look for before walking over and waving a hand at a nearby computer. It lit up at her touch and she bulldozed through the UI with sharp gestures. She’d probably look back on this and admit that she was being melodramatic with the gestures, for Lashawn’s sake more than anything, but for now she had a kidney to find. She hummed, feeling herself slowly falling into the bottom of the barrel when it came to her energy levels.

“Alright kidney found-” she stopped, hearing footsteps. “Lashawn, get out of here.”

“What?” Lashawn whispered, in a daze. Still in disbelief.

“You need to get out of here,” Theo whispered. “I can take the fall for this — I’ve got connections and they’ll be so distracted trying to figure out what the shit I was doing in the hospital and I’ll send them on a goose chase so they won’t notice that I just assigned a kidney to your dad. But you can’t be caught dressed like that in here. You need to get out of dodge. In the morning, go to the corner of Lincoln and Scarlet avenue and there’ll be a fitness center there. Ask around for Evan McCulloch and tell him that the Nobra can kiss my ass. He’ll know you know me and believe your story when you tell it. He’ll get who he needs to do get my ass out of dodge, okay?” Theo took a sharpie from the nearby desk, grabbing Lashawn’s hand and pushing her sleeve up. She wrote down the nouns of her instructions on Lashawn’s arm and then pat her shoulder. “Go, Lashawn. I’ll be fine.”

“I...wow, are you always this 007?” Lashawn asked in a whispered chuckle, her eyes wide under her domino mask with disbelief.

Theo smirked at her and punched Lashawn’s shoulder. She disappeared in a poof of black smoke, which quickly dissipated. Theo looked at her hand. “Glad that theory worked,” Theo muttered, “thought there might be something with her powers based off of what she said...”

She hears pounding on the door and Theo drawls loudly, “Hello gentlemen! I got lost on my way to the bathroom.”

* * *

Theo went quietly with security. Quiet in the loosest connotation of the word. She channeled Axel, chattering about everything and nothing as they put her in a cell at one of the police precincts around town. Then when it was morning, they pulled her out and put her in an interrogation room. Officer after officer asked her questions and she gave them all different stories. She got lost on her way to the bathroom. She was visiting an ailing grandmother. She was thinking of stealing a kidney and selling it on the black market. She wasn’t even trying to cover up the fact that she was lying, making it obvious to frustrate the pigs. Gave them three fake names: Evelyn, Gertrude, Bertilda. Each obvious lie made them angrier and angrier until she was certain that a few of them were ready to hit her. Keep them angry, make them think she’s covering something bigger, keep them off of looking into the hospital database since she hadn’t had time to clean her tracks well enough to hold up against an investigation. She was...kind of confident that eventually Lashawn would find Evan and Evan would get Leonard, even if he didn’t believe Lashawn. And maybe Leonard would come get her and work his magic on everything to get her out. Probably.

She had her head lazily lying against her arm on the desk, playing with her fingers in the air. Innocent tech difficulties were happening across the office: a typo being added to a file here, a coffee machine being run just a _bit_ too hot, a police car’s alarm going on outside — it was nothing anyone could blame her for. They were being rude at the least and a little brutal at the worst.

“Hey there.” A man’s warm voice made her look sharply at its source. A blond man, thin and lean with a runner’s build, dressed in khaki slacks and a white shirt and a blue sweater vest. Probably not a beat cop then. “Do you want some coffee?”

“...yeah,” she answered. “Doesn’t mean I’ll talk if you give it to me.”

“I know,” he replied. “You just look really tired. Maybe some caffeine would loosen you up, but it’s more about your well-being than getting an explanation out of you.”

Theo raised an eyebrow. “...I’m more of an iced latte kind of person. If that’s too much trouble, grab me a hot cocoa and put ice cubes in it.” She smirked. “Make your coworkers watch and snab a picture of their face for me. That’ll work as caffeine.”

If the latter request made the man uncomfortable or confused, he didn’t show it. So Theo didn’t show her disappointment at that to him as he left. It felt like only a few minutes passed before he came back in with an iced latte and a mug for himself. He sat down across from her.

“I’m not a cop,” he replied, setting down the latte and easing it towards her. “I’m actually in here as a prank on me, I guess.”

“Oh?” Theo asked, sitting up slowly and taking the latte.

“I work in CSI and they had me looking around the hospital,” he answered, “I pissed off a coworker by saying that whoever broke into the hospital had to be very smart because I couldn’t find anything that stuck out as unnatural. Most people who do B&E, they leave something very obvious behind that they weren’t thinking about: a shard of glass accidentally not cleaned up, a shoe print in the petunias, a bit of thread left behind from a jacket catching on something.” He took a sip out of his mug, smiling lightly. “Not you.”

“I have had a lot of thoughts on breaking out of places,” Theo replied, shrugging. “I thought breaking into one would be no brainer. It was. They need to put their security staff through their paces again.”

“So, what? You broke in so you could say how bad security was?”

She smiled, taking a sip of her iced latte. “Nope. You can keep thinking that though, Mr...”

“I’m Barry Allen,” he replied.

“Allen,” she hummed. “I see.” She reached out with her mind, adding notes to her file on the mystery of that one phone call she’d overheard from Mick. “You can call me Teddy, I suppose.”

“Okay, Teddy.” He nodded. “I’m probably not going to get straightforward answers out of you. Nobody has.”

“I’m so glad the Central City police force has learned to recognize patterns,” Theo drawled.

“But I can probably guess you’re stalling,” Mr. Allen replied. He must’ve spotted her eyes widen a fraction and he continued, “Are you waiting for someone to show up?”

“...for lack of a better term, I’m waiting for my father to come pick me up,” she answered. “I shouldn’t be interrogated like this. I’m obviously not a legal adult, I’ve got a hell of a baby face going. So, yeah. I smelled something fishy about how you guys were handling this and decided to give hell in return.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” Barry winced. “They’re better about investigating things like this when the Flash is hovering over their shoulder-”

“I’d be worse if the Flash was here,” Theo replied. “So I’m glad it’s you, Barry.”

“What’s wrong with the Flash?” Mr. Allen asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s not really...specific to the Flash,” Theo answered. “It’s a...superspeed phobia. I get scared of anything that goes faster than a race car or a speeding bullet. Especially if it’s green.”

“Green?” He furrowed his eyebrows. “Why’s that?”

Theo shrugged. “I don’t see any reason to elaborate with you. You got your one, straightforward answer out of me to one question you’ve asked. You’re someone I just met and even if you are nice for a pig, you’re still a pig. This is probably a good cop bad cop routine. So, I don’t see any reason to not just give you hell until-”

“Until Leonard arrives?” Barry asked.

Theo’s eyes widened and she could feel the mask she had of her persona crack just a little more. “I...I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“I think you do,” Barry replied. “Because he’s the only other person who thinks of pulling the ice cubes in hot cocoa thing on my coworkers. He does it with coffee too. Something I’m sure you’re familiar with.”

He was right. Leonard had made a big show on her first morning out of the hospital, once she was moved in, in making coffee and pouring himself a mug of it. Then he sat in front of her at the table with the mug and a cup of ice, seemingly paying her no mind as he slowly dropped ice cubes into the mug of hot coffee. He had burst out laughing when she finally broke and made a disgusted grunt. Sam called it psychological warfare, Leonard had called it a test. What for on either of those paths the whole thing was for, Theo couldn’t even begin to _guess_. And Barry Allen knew of Leonard’s test and had picked up on her referencing it in her bullshitting.

She looked at her hands on the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Look-”

There were then two explosions. One was an explosion that, in hindsight, engulfed the wall of the room next to the interrogation room—which was the room closest to the outside wall. In quick succession, before either of them could move, another hit the wall of the interrogation room. Theo’s vision went white and all she could hear was a faint ringing in her ears. She closed her eyes and dove into the office’s wifi, sitting inside of a security camera.

She watches as Barry gets over the explosion before her body did, feeling shock as she watches him pick her body up and gently lay it down in the corner. Why would he take the time to take care of her? What is up with this city and people she doesn’t know having an interest in her well-being? Is it the water? He then disappears, in the flash of her digital eye. She has the option to go back over the footage, slow it down, but there’s too much happening in the present to worry about the past right now.

She hunts through the camera system, internally screaming at the police for not having something more in depth. Her mind gives her numerous guesses as to why, but it doesn’t matter: what matters is that the Flash is fighting someone outside. DFAB, either wearing a suit of metal or they _are_ metal. It is hard to tell, from the resolution of the camera and how fast and busy the fight is. The fight is too loud for Theo to make much out of the conversation, so she doesn’t. She simply saves the best image she can of the person the Flash is fighting and then gets back into her body.

She jumped, realizing her body had been moved since Barry put her down. She was on a shoulder, her eyes following a blue long coat down. It was instantly recognizable, coupled with the white scarf: Captain Boomerang was taking her body somewhere.

“Shit time for you to wake up, shiela,” he replied, patting her back. Must have felt her tense up on his shoulder. “Go back to bed for me or I’ll smack ya to sleep.”

She left her body, going back into the security system and letting him think she fainted. She bundles images, sound clips, everything her panicking mind can think of, wraps it into a folder and carries it towards Lisa’s house. She stuffs it into the first digital device she can reach, recognizing it fuzzily as Wizard’s smartphone, then bolts back to her body. Hoping beyond all hope that either that or Lashawn or both will get their attention. Maybe that Allen guy was calling Mick right now. She follows Boomerang and her body through the city, mapping out the route they’re taking. She feels more and more exhausted the more she’s doing this, but the data has to be collected, she can bundle it up and send it to her email and have that email send it to Lisa.

But she’s stretching herself too thin, she realizes. She sinks back into her body and lets sleep truly take her, hoping Boomerang will suffer under the entirety of her dead weight.


	6. 25 K

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter titles changing ever so slightly all the time (from degrees celsius to degrees kelvin to now JUST kelvin to now a different number scale in kelvin) is due to my boyfriend. He knows more about science than I do. Shout-out to him for double-checking my science for this chapter because I try to keep things as realistic as *possible* (it's A: a fanfic, B: a *superhero* fanfic, and C: a setting where we've established magic to exist, so I'm not going 100% on the accuracy, but I'm trying my damned best).
> 
> This chapter was delayed by E3 2018 because I got very excited about Doom 2016 getting a sequel. I love that game so much.

####  **Probably Central City, MO** **  
****???**

Theo woke up groggy. Her head throbbed, so she had a migraine. Theo fuzzily checked the imaginary boxes in her head: migraine, dizziness, nausea. Yep. She had fucking internet exhaustion: the thing that happens when she spends too much time inside computers rather than her own body.

Theo was in a dark room by herself, a long mirror along the left wall from her bed. The minute she moved her head slightly to look at it, the lights turned on and she groaned.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice chimed overhead, “welcome to a hostage situation. Behave and hope you mean enough to Leonard Snart and you should get out of here alive.”

She snorted, slowly sitting up. She lied through her teeth, “Be gentle with me, it’s my first time being a hostage. Define good behavior.”

“No backtalk. No escape attempts. No sounds at odd times of the night. You are being monitored on camera: anything you do can and will be used against you.”

Theo bit back a smirk. She nodded. “Okay. Who the fuck is Leonard Snart and why should I care if he cares?”

“Don’t play dumb, you’ve been spotted with known Rogues for weeks and have been spotted at Lisa Snart’s home.” Theo felt her blood go hot, flushing up in her face as she processed what that meant. They’d been watching her for weeks. How much did they know? They couldn’t be watching through cameras, she’d sense those. Probably a tail on the house, so maybe surface details. So probably not her powers if they were monitoring her via a camera here. She still had cards to play.

“Okay,” she replied. “Guess you should off me now, because he doesn’t give a damn-”

She heard a loud THUNK from the next room over and Lisa’s voice came in clear as day, “Kid, I am gonna _strangle_ you, we seriously had a talk about this-”

“ _Lisa_?!”

“I’m halfway to icing you two in a room with a kidnapped therapist, I have _HAD IT_ -”

Theo snorted, despite herself. “Lisa, thank you for ruining my bluff.”

“You weren’t bluffing and you know it!”

“Thank you, ladies,” the woman chimed in again, sounding like the cat who got the canary, “for confirming you do know each other.”

“Fuck you,” Theo and Lisa swore at the same time.

“Settle in,” the woman replied, “it’s going to be a long time before Snart realizes where we are.”

Theo hummed, looking around. Small room, maybe 10 feet by 8 feet by 8 feet (then again, she could see herself being off by approximately 2 feet for each of those guesstimates, so what did she know). The walls had to be thin enough for her to hear Lisa so clearly—had to be a cheap rent place. Mick might’ve been able to put a hole in the wall. She slowly approached the door, examining the lock. She hid her grin from the camera, getting a ping that the lock was just made to _look_ like the kind of lock you could pick traditionally. But it was _electronic_ . Leonard would probably call this a trap, but it was a trap to the _old school_ . Put a lockpick in here, anything metal to jiggle the innards of the lock, and you’d get _zapped_ . But if she could use her magic to use that trap system to open the lock...she could probably brute force her way through it, maybe melt the lock by making the system pour too much electrical power into it and causing an overheat...no wait. There wouldn’t be enough heat made via the electric current of this system, she’d just trash the lock and lock herself in even _more_ . And the power system. That sucker would blow a fuse if she tried the melting path. She’d just be _stuck_ . So it was a plan Z to the Plan A, which was to pick the lock, keep it intact, and make whoever set this up look like an _idiot_ because they were the fucking idiot who thought they could lock up Theo Soliani, renegade since age 10 and newest member of the Rogues.

At least, she told herself that as a way to pep talk herself as she pinged the lock again to make sure she wasn’t just talking out her own ass in her head.

“Whatcha up to, kiddo?” Lisa asked.

“Checking out the lock,” Theo replied. “Might be able to bust out of here-”

“Wouldn’t recommend it,” Lisa replied. “Better to stay put until the others are here.”

Theo paused, her eyebrows furrowing together. “I’m sorry, _what._ ”

“We stay put,” Lisa replied, “and we lower our chances of shooting each other on accident 100%. Or rather, us getting shot by them because they’ll be hotheaded and gung-ho because oh no, two of theirs have been captured, time to go rip the kidnappers a new one. They won’t have their heads on all the way...not that they do all the time, mind you.” Theo could hear Lisa sigh. Deeply. It was almost surreal how much she resembled Sam in that sigh.

“So what, we just...sit?” Theo asked. “I’m fairly certain that is _not_ what other people would tell me to do in this situation.”

“No, but they don’t have the context and experience I have with this kind of situation,” Lisa answered, “Handheld Mirror was not a fan of almost getting torched by a jumpy and angry Mick. Safe assumption is that you don’t want that either. Besides, we can do plenty from here.”

“You can’t see me, but I’m raising my eyebrows. Very skeptical facial expression.”

“Get comfy and wait about...an hour,” Lisa answered. “Save that sass for then. I’m glad it was you over there, rather than someone like Pipes. You’re chattier.”

“Usually in a hostage situation, chattier is worse to deal with.” Theo kicked the door lightly, just to show her displeasure at it, before circling back to the bed in the room and sitting down.

“Nah, you’re thinking the wrong way.” She could hear Lisa chuckle. “Quiet and chatty both work in any situation, just depends on what you’re trying to achieve. I’ll give ya a lesson on it when we get out of here.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Theo replied. “So...what they’d grab you doing?”

“Getting groceries, thankfully,” Lisa answered. “At least they’re polite enough not to snab me while I’m teaching a kid. Or sensible enough. Probably know I’d give them hell and take a pair of skates to their asses if they messed with my kids. They don’t want me like that. They want a polite hostage, meaning they want a low maintenance hostage situation. Probably for a longer holding time, so they’re mostly looking to freak out Leonard like they said.”

“They picked me up from a police station,” Theo replied, taking off her parka and checking her stitches. They _looked_ fine? No different from usual. Theo sighed. “They went loud and hot to pick me up.”

“You probably weren’t their prime target then.” Theo tilted her head, letting that sink in as Lisa spoke. “Police stations are usually too much trouble to mess with, so they were after some kind of data or someone else being held in the station. You being there was probably frosting to the cupcake.”

“Well, regardless,” Theo replied, laying back on on the bed, “I hope that CSI dude that was interrogating me when it all went down is okay. Barry seemed like an okay person.”

“Barry _Allen?_ ” Lisa asked. Theo smirked. Hook, line, sinker, much, Lisa?

“Yeah, blond guy, sweater vest. What’s his story? He knew Leonard.”

“Barry Allen is one of the most well connected people in Central,” Lisa replied. “I can count people who _don’t_ know him on my hand.”

“Crooked cop?” Theo asked, focusing on a point on the ceiling. Imagining puzzle pieces, trying to put them together.

“Opposite of that, kiddo. Barry’s put the Rogues in jail more times than I can count,” Lisa answered. “Full story’s kind of complicated, but he’s alright. Looks out for criminals, does what he can to make sure they get their rights. Probably why he was poking his nose into your shit, Theo. What were you doing at the police station?”

“I got caught in the city hospital after hours,” Theo answered. “Do a little community service and they get fussy.”

“Somehow, I don’t believe you were in there for community service.”

“Full story’s kind of complicated,” Theo replied. “Long story short, I was doing extracurricular activities at 1 AM and got caught. Not the first time that extracurriculars have gone south like that for me, probably won’t be the last.”

Lisa laughed. “Smart to have low expectations, considering the kind of extracurriculars you get up to.”

There was a lull in the conversation and Theo found that not having anything to do made her skin itch. Wasn’t her first time captured like this, but at least the other times she was allowed to focus on escaping or annoying the shit out of her captors. This time, she had to sit and she decided that was worse.

“I know I shouldn’t be surprised.” Lisa’s voice made Theo jump out of her skin. “I mean, it sounds like you took a bullet like a champ and got Wizard to respect you, so at this point, I’m sure you’re able to do anything you can put your mind to.”

“Your data’s faulty,” Theo replied, squinting at the ceiling and poking her tongue into her cheek. She shrugged. “Wizard doesn’t respect me, he hates me.”

“That is _not_ how it sounded in the hospital,” Lisa replied, “but we’ll get back to that. My _original_ question was me asking you why you’re so calm. Me, I get. I’m used to all this horseshit. You’re new at this.”

“Mostly?” Theo hummed, then answered, “Freaking out’s not going to help. It’s not productive. I can do all the emotional breakdown and unbagging later, but this isn't the place for that shit right now. My emotions can sit in a corner, I’m _busy_ being captured and trying to find three different ways to turn this situation around. Harder to do since all I can do is sit here and talk to you and our captor audience, but it helps that I have spite. They don’t _get_ the satisfaction of seeing me down.” Theo paused, stretching her right arm out above her and holding her palm up to the ceiling. She took her other hand and put pressure on her right hand through the fingers, stretching her wrist. “That make sense?”

“Too much sense,” Lisa answered, sounding almost...fond? Was Theo misreading that by being too hopeful?

Theo huffed. “Good. Now, speaking of sense, the idea that Wizard respects me makes no sense.”

“Why doesn’t it make sense?”

“He avoids me like I’ve got the plague,” Theo answered, “and when I _do_ see him, he makes a pissy comment about my shoulder or how I hold myself like I’m trash.”

“Yeah, no, that’s typical Wizard behavior,” Lisa replied, “see, in his mind, he’s giving you your space, reminding you to take care of your shoulder, and trying to help you grow. He’s _bad_ at direct respect. It’s why he’s an ass to Leonard, but Leonard’s an ass back to him sometimes, so it evens out.”

“Okay, I don’t believe _any_ of that for a second,” Theo replied. “I think he’s just an asshole.”

“Would an asshole swear vengeance over your unconscious body in two different languages and punch Robin for you?”

Theo sat up, wincing as her shoulder hurt at the sudden movement. “He _what_.”

“Oh, no one’s told you?”

Theo used her left hand to cover her eyes, slowly dragging her hand down her face to her chin. She was only 14 and she felt too old for this. “No, even though that probably would’ve been at least a funny story to tell over dinner when nothing good’s on TV. Much better than Mirror Master’s Planet Earth re-runs.”

“Way I heard it is that he was reacting to you ordering him around on instinct—none of the others would order him to toss them in the way of a bullet...” Lisa trailed off a moment and Theo let her. “You were being pushy enough that he just did what you said. When you hit the ground, it hit him what was going on and he apparently started _screaming_.” Lisa made a clicking sound with her tongue as Theo’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ll believe the screaming, since his voice was hoarse for days after. Everyone in that warehouse froze and apparently the storm that he had going turned into a hurricane.”

“...he made a hurricane?” Theo asked, biting down the follow-up joke of _“Oh golly, nobody’s ever made a hurricane for me before!”_

“Yeah-huh, that’s what brought the Bats over, only to find the Mirrors and Trickster trying to keep you together from that bullet wound and Wizard being held back by Leonard and Mick from going after the hench-people.”

“Considering he’s said that he can make tornados in people’s stomachs, I’m surprised said hench-people aren’t dead.”

“Think he needs focus and lots of it to do stuff like that. Don’t think he had much of that with him raging.”

“Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that I push him to the point of unthinkable rage,” Theo replied, grimacing as her voice cracked.

“No, I’m forbidding the act of reading people’s actions wrong out of self-deprecation. Nah-uh. Not happening. You can get other hereditary traits from Leonard, but not _that_ one. I’ve put up with one person doing that for _years_ , I **refuse** to have another.” There was a thunk from Lisa’s room and Theo theorized that the woman had just thrown a _shoe_ at her. Or tried to. “Anyway, things were shouted, Flash was called, Robin apparently made a comment about you making bad choices and Wizard thought this gave him full clearance to sock Robin—in _front_ of Batman—in the face.”

“...funnily enough,” Theo replied, “I _still_ think he’s an asshole. But I guess he’s an asshole that _cares_ about me and my honor or dignity or whatever for reasons I don’t even think I can comprehend.”

“We’re all assholes, kid, you just happen to work well with everyone else. You’re like Len: you slow everyone down and make sure they don’t run themselves into a wall. Asking questions, holding yourself like a stray cat, all that shit makes the crew actually _think_ about what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. It’s the positive of having kids around, y’all make us better people.”

“Okay, but Weather Wizard’s what? A year or two older than me? What, is he firmly trying to take the older brother archetypical pedestal and hiss like a-” Theo paused, blinking slowly. “Oh my God, he _is_ , isn’t he? He’s trying to be my aloof older brother figure, but he’s got like... _baggage_ or something that makes his way of going about it more asshole-ish and dick-ish.” It was like someone was pouring a water bottle over her brain: things felt clearer, yet still distorted in the water’s flow.

“If the cape gig ends up falling out beneath your feet,” Lisa replied, “go be a psychologist. Or a therapist. What makes you say that?”

* * *

_“Remember,” Evan had said, “you’ve only got so much degree of movement with your left arm. No lifting it up too high or stretching it too far across your body.”_

_“I could’ve told her that and I didn’t need the community college courses to do it,” Weather Wizard sneered. “Make that degree worth something and give her more to work with.”_

* * *

_Theo was frowning and looking over a project. The project was an attempt to make an air conditioner from scrap around the house._

_“Do you even have a power source, trainwreck?” Weather Wizard’s voice echoed from behind her, making her jump._

_She glared over her shoulder, then looked back to her project. She grinned and snapped her fingers, running off to go grab an old cold gun that she’d found the other day._

* * *

_She was having a bad mental health day. She’d been left alone and that was the last thing she needed at the moment. Her brain was fuzzy with anxious thoughts: what if everyone was moving without her? What if she was being abandoned? What if they decided she wasn’t worth it? She faintly remembered that Leonard and Lisa were out for sibling bonding time, that Mick and Sam were out doing errands. Had no idea where the other kids were._

_She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting in that one spot in her room, blankly staring at her laptop’s screen. Youtube had auto-played countless videos, her attempts to cheer herself up with cat videos. Eventually she dubbed the cats to not work this time and swapped to livestreams of people speedrunning old 90’s games._

_She jumped when her door burst open, Weather Wizard standing there in a beat up leather jacket and jeans. She checked her shoulder, making sure she didn’t open her stitches. Theo squawked as a plastic bag was thrown at her._

_“Stop being a lump, be a person,” Weather Wizard grumbled before heading out._

_Inside the bag was a water bottle and a protein bar, but eating and drinking those things helped her restart her brain a bit. Made it less fuzzy, got her to take a shower._

_The next day was easier, even as Wizard hovered over her like a stormcloud._

* * *

“A bruise on my shoulder blade,” Theo answered Lisa. “He’s an ass, but I guess he’s an ass that cares. The caring does not excuse the ass part.”

Lisa barked out a laugh. “I’m glad that you’ve learned that much! Some of my girls, they don’t get that. I blame the adults writing the fucked up young adult novels. Or the vampire TV shows. Depends on the day you ask me.”

“Or how much booze is in ya, right Lisa?” A male voice asked over the intercom.

“Digger! I was wondering how long you’d stay away from the mic,” Lisa replied, a smile in her voice. “How’re you?”

Theo raised her eyebrows. Lisa was so casual, friendly. Like she was talking to an old friend rather than someone who was holding her as a hostage. Theo had a personal philosophy of sarcasm and stepping over social boundaries in these situations, sure, but she couldn’t imagine talking to any of the people who’ve held her captive like they were friends.

“Eh, alright. Glad to finally be back in Central. You hear about my time in the squad?”

“Bits and pieces. Did they really have a bomb in your brain?”

“Government bitch used to be able to control it, but she got fired thanks to your brother and his ice buddies,” Digger answered. “So they’ve got the bomb there, but...well, the remote control got passed around and welp. Blacksmith got her hands on it. Went through a lot of work for it.”

Theo’s eyes widened. What was that she told Lisa yesterday? That she could disarm a bomb? Was that Lisa’s game?

“She _would_ get her rocks off on having you as an attack dog.” Lisa whistled. “So none of this shit is personal?”

“Nah. I get why Leonard tossed me out: I don’t fall in line easy and with the kids around, I wasn’t a good role model.” He drawled out “role model” in a weird manner. Theo didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or regretful or both. “I like being on my own anyways: lets me work in lots of places with lots of people. Riddler from Gotham? He was fun to fuck with.”

“Bow chika bow _wow_ , I’m fourteen, I would _not_ like to imagine sex between two old men,” Theo quipped. “Too saggy.”

Digger snorted over the intercom. She was tempted to make the speaker explode. “Forgot you were there, sheila. What’s her story, Lisa?”

“We picked her up, Leonard likes her,” Lisa replied. “That’s why she was picked up as a hostage, right?”

“Leonard doesn’t like me, I’m just profitable,” Theo replied. There had to be some reason Lisa was playing that—her insecurity with Leonard—up. It couldn’t just be because of frustration of dealing with Leonard not falling into line with what Lisa thought the situation needed. Lisa had never been caught by the cops, that suggested a lot of guile. So, what was the _point_ besides getting Theo over her insecurity? Theo decided to play along, trusting Lisa. She had a good track record of escaping the cops, so maybe that’d work here.

“Bull _shit_ ,” Digger laughed. “I got to hear some of the audio. Blacksmith had a tail on Lisa and Leonard while they were at a bar and, kid, it speaks for itself.”

“Oh?” Lisa sounded suspiciously pleased about the fact that her and her brother’s privacy had been invaded. “Tell ya what. You play that recording over the intercom—write it up as psychological torture, maniacally laugh a little, Blacksmith’ll love that—and I’ll get that bomb deactivated so you can get a friend or someone to take it out.”

“I somehow don’t believe you,” Digger replied. Theo frowned. He sounded like he was lying. Obviously lying. His vocal tone was all over the place—his Australian accent was played up to almost comedic heights, which added almost drunken lilts and passive-aggressive yet friendly drawling and spats when he pronounced words. She was having a hard time pinning down his motive and actual meaning of his words, since she had so little data to work with. Why hadn’t she ever paid attention to Crooked_Jim’s posts about Captain Boomerang on the Renegades forums? It would’ve been worth deciphering the badly transcribed Australian accent to have any kind of insight on Captain Boomerang right now.

Lisa’s voice still had a smile to it. “When have I lied to you, Cap?”

There was a pause. Theo got up from the cot, doing her best to look uncomfortable to try to egg him on. He could probably see her through the camera, right? Lisa wanted him to share that audio for reasons Theo could only theorize (Lisa knew what was on the audio and wanted Theo to hear it, Lisa was playing a prank on Theo, Lisa secretly hated Theo and wanted Theo to suffer- no wait, that last one was anxiety. Probably. Probably anxiety), so Theo was choosing to trust Lisa and help where she could.

The intercom snapped, making Theo jump. The audio was chaotic: bustling in a way that reminded Theo of the diners she’d been in over her life. There were people, moving about in the audio playing over the intercom.

“Lenny,” Lisa’s voice came over the intercom with a soft static, “I need you to acknowledge one thing for me.”

Leonard’s unmistakeable grunt came over the intercom, the static not doing enough to distort the questioning tone of the grunt. Theo had heard it a couple times now, enough to recognize it as Leonard’s “the hell you want?” grunt.

Past Lisa, recorded Lisa, continued on like a bulldozer. “That you’re having another identity crisis. Not over the fact where you’re leading the Rogues more confidently again, but over the fact that a teenager looks up to you.”

Leonard sighed. “You got me tipsy to get me emotional and talk, didn’t you?”

“Yup,” Lisa said, both in the recording and in the present. Even popping the p. Theo felt tempted to smile at the familiar quirk.

“Well it’s working, fuck you.” Past Leonard sighed, deeply. “You know,” he drawled, “when you first met Scudder and you had a panic attack because you could see yourself falling in love with his scrawny ass and manic tendencies?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m having something similar, with the kid. We Snarts, we always have identified what sort of emotional shit we could have with a person before we get in too deep. Easiest way to avoid all the social bullshit. I can see myself seeing the kid as _my_ kid, if I let myself.”

Theo stopped dead. She’d been pacing, but at that confession, Theo’s legs just. Stopped working.

“Letting that kid, who has obviously had a _line_ of bad adults in her life, look up to me? Becoming closer to her, letting her bond with me? That’s a danger. To _her_.”

She put her hands behind her back, her right hand gripping her left wrist as she took short huffs of air. Her stomach churned. Theo bit her lip as she closed her eyes.

“I’m a mostly ex-convict with a history of violence. I keep everyone else at as much of a distance as I can, especially the younger shits because I know better than damn near _everyone_ that no one needs a Snart for a father. You know that too.”

Theo opened her eyes as she listened to the recording of Leonard bark out a bitter, quiet laugh.

“So,” past Lisa replied, “you’re going to hurt her _now_ to stop a potential hurt that you’re not even sure is going to happen?”

“Lisa-”

“ _Lenny_ , you’re not our sperm donor.” The Lisa in the recording was adamant, verbally pushing. Theo could imagine Lisa putting a hand on her brother’s shoulder, shaking him lightly as she spoke. “You should know that by the fact that you actually care _if_ you hurt this kid. She _adores_ you-”

Leonard let out a slow, sour laugh. “You get over your shit with Sam, I’ll work on the kid.”

“Fuck _you_ ,” past Lisa guffawed, “you _emotionally constipated bastard_.”

“No thanks, trainwreck,” Leonard snickered.

Theo let go of her wrist, arms falling to her sides. She clenched her fists as the intercom snapped again. She inhaled slowly, trying to bottle her emotions. This _wasn’t_ the place for this, Theo. Keep cool. Keep. Cool.

“You should see the look on your face!” Digger laughed.

Theo dug her short fingernails into her palms to keep herself from consciously snapping into the intercom, from filling the entire system with loud white noise, make _everyone_ as uncomfortable as she was. Turn the heater on, crank that shit up, make them as sweaty as her palms.

“Back off, Digger,” Lisa barked from the next room.

“Fuckin’ make me, Leese,” Digger laughed. Theo took a deep breath and focused. She closed her eyes, her mind’s fingers trailing along the coils of wires from their intercom speakers to the input—the microphone. She made it explode, wincing slightly at the loud feedback explosion as she did so.

It was blissfully silent for a few minutes as Theo began to pace again. She had too much energy, anxiety and hope and stupid. Fucking. _Emotions_ bouncing around everywhere in her being. She took a moment to make sure she wasn’t flickering the lights before kicking the cot’s leg. Theo found herself not caring as the cheap cot fell down with a clatter.

“You okay over there?” Lisa asked. “I heard a thump.”

“Give me,” Theo said, “ _a minute_ .” She rolled her shoulders back and popped her neck, staring hard at the intercom speaker. “Why the _fuck_ , Lisa, did I have to hear that?”

“Because he’d never tell you otherwise,” Lisa replied.

“That’s not your call,” Theo replied. “That? That was an invasion of privacy that _those assholes_ did. You did not have to egg and promise or bribe or _whatever_ and extend the circle of people who have invaded both your and Leonard’s privacy to me.” Theo exhaled sharply, punching the air. “I _hate_ this. If he felt that way, I would’ve wanted him to _tell me himself_ because that’s his feelings and how _he_ feels. Having that shit revealed behind your back? It’s fucking _shitty_.”

“Shit, kiddo, you’re acting like I killed your dog-”

“Lisa,” Theo sighed. “My step-mom pulled this shit on me. She’d argue that since she was family, since she knew me better than other people, that she could just reveal my shit to other people because I was _too secretive_ , not chatty enough, emotionally cut off, whatever you want to call it. You’re not the bitch my step-mom is, but the situation’s similar enough that I just...” Theo sighed, rolling her shoulders forward. “I’m getting overly defensive because it reminded me of the shit she’d pull, alright? I’m sorry for yelling and snapping, but I just...I just _can’t_ deal with someone else doing it to me or someone else.”

Lisa was quiet a moment. Theo started thinking breakout strategies again, going as ridiculous in her planning as the idea of making a robotic dinosaur out of _something_ (she hadn’t truly thought far as to what it’d be made out of, but she was sure it was _very_ necessary that it needed at least five laser cannons). Theo got as far as trying to figure out what sort of dinosaur she wanted for this (narrowed it down for raptors for size and surprise factor or t-rexes for excuse for loud roaring) when Lisa finally spoke up.

“You’re right,” Lisa replied. “I was poking my nose into other peoples’ problems and trying to fix things on my own when...they’re just not my problems to fix.”

“Firmly not,” Theo replied. “I get that you’ve got good intentions, but...sometimes it can get _too_ invasive, y’know?”

Lisa was quiet, but then she laughed. “I just nodded. You can’t see it, but I’m nodding.”

“So...how much longer do you think this is going to take?” Theo asked. “Because I’m pretty sure I need to do my daily physical therapy things for my shoulder, but I don’t remember how to do them without Evan or my papers.”

“Give them three to four more hours,” Lisa answered. “If they take that long, means they don’t know where we are and that shit about crossfire and heads running hot will be moot.”

“Okay.” Theo hummed and flapped her hands in a quick, sharp motion. “I’m gonna fix my cot.”


	7. 0 K

Theo managed to fix the cot, jabbing here and there with the structure and got it to support her weight. She laid down and stared at the ceiling. She put serious thought into the robot dinosaur: they will be a t-rex, their name will be BFG for Big Fire-breathing Giant for the flamethrower she’ll put in their mouth, and the main component of their body will be the large jeep she could ping outside. Before she could try to figure out more things to put inside of it, she heard a loud _thunk_. She sat up, jumping off of the cot and facing the door with her bad shoulder away from the door.

The door was slammed down and Weather Wizard was on the other side of it. She held her position, staring at him as she crossed her arms.

“What, no thank you?” Weather Wizard drawled.

Theo tilted her head and narrowed her green eyes. “Are you really Weather Wizard or are they screwing with me?”

“I quote,” Weather Wizard answered in a deadpan tone as he leaned against the doorway, “I’m not alive until I have a Monster and a coffee mixed into a mug. Stop looking at me like that, I slept three hours. Shit. Eight hours. I slept eight hours.” He tilted his head at her, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Damn it, it _is_ you,” Theo groaned, shaking her head and closing her eyes as she tried to hide a smile. “Only you would be that much of an asshole to keep holding me to that quote forever.”

She opened her eyes as Weather Wizard snorted, moving aside and making an opening. Theo walked through, seeing Captain Cold and Lisa whispering as they exited the room next to the one she’d been in. Theo hardened herself, clenching her fists and getting her head in the game. She kept herself in the moment.

“Where are the others?” She asked.

“Heatwave and Trickster are running interference, the Mirrors are somewhere,” Weather Wizard asked behind her.

Key turned to him. “Alright. What’s our exit plan?”

“We get out,” Captain Cold answered, “and signal the Mirrors.”

Key looked at him over her shoulder, keeping her face neutral as she could, and nodded sharply. “We doing a meet up with the distraction crew?”

“Kid, what do you take me for?” Cold barked.

She was proud of herself for not flinching at the loud tone, even as she felt her muscles tense up. “I’m checking down the list,” she answered. “I don’t doubt you. I’m learning what I can, old man.”

His jaw shifted and she forced herself to look away, staring into the wall where she knew the intercom wires were. Key took a deep breath, raising a hand. “We need to find Boomerang.”

“Why?” Weather Wizard asked, laughing. “That idiot? Heatwave’s probably-”

“Lisa promised him something on my behalf and I-” Key took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “Do. _Not_. Go back on promises. Ever. Leave without me, I’ve been able to bust out since I woke up, but I was following Lisa’s lead.” She cracked her neck. “I’m used to going it alone, so if you all leave, I’ll be fine.”

“Kid,” Captain Cold said, “you going it alone is what _got_ you here. You say you’re going after Boomerang, I’m going with you.” He stepped forward. “Wizard, get Lisa out of here. No killing anyone.”

“I heard you the first six times on the way in,” Weather Wizard replied, quickly stepping forward and passing Captain Cold. Key noted that he hit his shoulder against the Captain’s, figuring it was machismo in action. She watched Weather Wizard and Lisa go, the two moving like a unit.

Key tilted her head, looking up at Captain Cold. “Alright. I’ve got a ping on him.”

“Through his boomerangs?” He asked. The slight bit of what she could see of his forehead rise up slightly, wrinkles moving up lightly.

“Through the bomb in his head,” Key answered. She closed her eyes, then quickly opened them. “Guess I’m leading, you following?”

“Only way it makes sense.” Captain Cold took a look at her bad shoulder, obviously not able to see her stitches with the parka on top of it. “They hurt your shoulder at all?”

Key shook her head. “Thankfully, they didn’t seem to throw me or jostle me too much for the stitching to tear. Thanks for caring.”

Cold snorted. She could swear a bit of his face turned red. “Gush later, bomb tracking now.”

She nodded sharply, moving. She kept pinging the bomb, moving towards it. She could feel Captain Cold’s presence behind her, giving her confidence to keep moving through hallways. From pinging electric wires and other devices, she had figured that the place wasn’t big. Key had sweet, sweet validation on that as they quickly ran into Captain Boomerang as he was facing off against Heatwave. Key moved on auto-pilot, aiming for Boomerang’s hand as he reached back to throw it.

“Cover me,” Key replied, looking over her shoulder. Leonard nodded and she reached out with her right hand. Cameras in the vicinity: off. She felt some switches within the boomerang, complicated demolitions tech wiring she’d never seen before. She willed it to turn off, hoping her magic would translate it for her.

Boomerang threw his boomerang. Key watched it sail through the air and how Heatwave narrowly dodged it.

“Getting rusty, Harkness?” Heatwave asked. He had a smirk on his face, which was bounced off by the boomerang hitting him in the back of the head.

Captain Boomerang snickered. “Not in the slightest-” He blinked. “Wait. That was supposed to explode.”

“Yeah, no, after the day I’ve had, I’m gonna want some of his curry,” Key replied. “So, I’m gonna have to say no. No explosions.” She put her left hand in her parka pocket, but held her right arm in the air.

“...Snart, since when have you been recruiting metas? Or is she magic?” Boomerang barked with laughter. “I thought after Desmond, you would’ve stuck to tech. Something you can disable or try to make them put down.”

“ _Tech_ nically,” Cold drawled, “it’s none of your concern. You should be more worried about the bomb in your head.”

“You hear that through the grapevine?” Boomerang asked. He slapped his knee, guffawing. “Or did Leese tell you? Is that why you picked up the squirt? To have another kill switch on me?”

She faltered, looking over at Cold. He was locked in his bitchface and utterly unreadable. She steeled herself, looking back at Captain Boomerang’s insufferable smirk. “Lisa promised you that a friend would disable the bomb if you played that audio,” Key replied. “I’m that friend.”

“Shit, sheila, you? You’re half my size, what are you, ten? From Mirror Apprentice, I knew Rogues were reaching down into elementary school, but shit, Leonard, this is fucked,” Boomerang laughed.

Key narrowed her eyes and clicked her tongue, frowning a tiny bit more when Boomerang ignored her and continued laughing. She snapped her fingers and all of Boomerang’s boomerangs came flying off of his bandoleer. He stopped laughing on a dime as she twirled her pointer finger about, his boomerangs flying through the air like bees. It was then she noticed that each boomerang had subtly different patterns to them in their paint and design.

“Oooooh, what’s this one?” she asked, pulling one out from the swarm. She held it in her hand. “Highly explosive, innit? Like the one you chucked at Heatwave, but bigger? I bet this is for walls.”

“Nah,” Boomerang answered, snickering. Trying to keep up his persona, maybe? He kept being hard to read. “That’s for people’s heads.”

Key raised an eyebrow. “Should I test that by throwing it at your head, Captain? Make it a two bomb party up in there?”

In the first clear action she saw from him, Captain Boomerang fell to his knees and clasped his hands together. It blocked his mouth from her perspective with his stupidly meaty hands. “No, no, please don’t, I got so much to live for! A wife-”

“He’s lying,” Heatwave deadpanned, “no woman would be stupid enough to marry this idiot.”

“-kids-”

“Definitely lying,” Captain Cold stated. “Unless...he kidnapped kids?”

“Wouldn’t put it past ole Digger,” Heatwave replied. “Might be for the better to let his brain go boom. He’s a sick fuck.”

Cold sighed in a short burst. “She’s not making that call. Too young to be killing people.”

“Hi, hello, right here,” Key replied, “can we _not_ talk about me like I’m not here? That’d be swell.” She narrowed her eyes. “Deal was established. We shift it willy nilly, what does that make us?”

“Rogues?” Heatwave asked.

Key closed her eyes and sighed. Slowly. She may have only been 14, but she felt too old for this. “Okay. Okay, _fine_. Deal was that he’d play the audio of Cold spilling his guts at a bar and I’d turn off the bomb in his head. Anyone present want to suggest addendums?” She opened her eyes, looking over her shoulder at Cold and Heatwave.

Heatwave snorted, keeping his flamethrower trained on Boomerang. “You turn off the bomb and he never comes back to Central?”

“How the hell would we enforce that?” Cold asked. “Sure, we’re patrolling, but we’re not omniscient.”

“No,” Key replied, smirking over her shoulder. “But I can be. Technically.” She paused, smirk falling somewhat. “Hypothetically, I can be.” She looked at Cold. “Can we knock him out? I don’t feel safe talking this out with him being able to hear.”

Cold immediately gave a nod to Heatwave, who took two large steps then smacked Boomerang in the back of the head. Key felt some tension leave her body as her shoulders sank a little to their normal height. When had she raised them? She felt nauseous for being so uncontrolled, so-

* * *

_“Unrefined!” Winters snapped, smacking Theo in the back of the head and causing the books to collapse to the ground._

_Theo stumbled a few steps, biting the inside of her cheek. She looked up at his orange eyes and flinched at the anger in them. “What did I do wrong?”_

_“You raised your shoulders! Raised them like you were a dog and they were your hackles!” Winters paced back and forth a short distance in front of her. “You_ **_must_ ** _be the image of control in all situations! Without control, magic and chaos will eat you_ **_alive_ ** _!” He huffed. “Get the books and try again.”_

_Theo picked up the books, slowly placing them on her head and then she walked. “Control” became her internal mantra. Control, control, control-_

* * *

“Theo.” A hand shook her shoulder. “Stay with me, kid.”

She blinked, seeing Cold in her personal space with a hand on her shoulder. She looked up into his goggles, then looked down to her hands. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

He gently nudged her chin up, making her watch him shake his head. “Nothing to be sorry for. Whatcha need from us right now?”

“Right now? Cover. I’m going to temporarily turn the bomb in his head off, if that’s okay,” she replied, stretching her hands. “Or change its frequency so the current control can’t control it. Then we need to talk evac since I’ve got concerns.”

“One thing at a time, kid,” Cold replied. “Change the frequency. What are you gonna key it to?”

Key bit her lip, humming. “Do you have a cell phone on hand?” Cold reached into his belt, pulling out a flip-phone. She hummed, taking it. “Okay, not what I meant, but I can make this work. Probably.” She sat down next to the crumpled Boomerang, putting a hand on his head and holding the phone in the other.

Key dives into the phone and finds it annoyingly cramped. She brings up the keyboard, feeling like she needs to speak to the phone’s code directly rather than willing it since...she’s, personally, not familiar with what flip-phones can _do_ besides call and text people.

/introduction(type: admin)  
Hello?

_01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100001 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101111 01101011 01100101 01101110 00100000 01110101 01110000 00100001 00100000 01001001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101000 01101111 01101110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101101 01100101 01100101 01110100 00100000 01000001 01100100 01101101 01101001 01101110 00111010 01001011 01100101 01111001 00100001 00100000 01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00111111_

She blinks momentarily before frowning at the glowing numbers before her. She swipes a hand and the numbers slowly shift into words.

_Hello! I have just woken up! It is an honor to meet Admin:Key! What can I do for you?_

Key considers changing keyboard for something to immediately nip this potential virus in the bud, but she stops herself and types.

/inquiry(permissions:admin)  
Please identify yourself and explain “I have just woken up”.

_Of course! I am 9852 1921 2128 8787 and have been charged by your magic to respond to your commands, hence “I have just woken up”. I have never been sentient before! I feel strangely energetic? Like I have been just fully charged, even though I am currently at 45% battery life._

/statement  
I honestly don’t know what to say for that.

/inquiry(permissions:admin)  
Have you always been in this phone?

_I have been in this phone since you willed me to be a few seconds ago. Permission to explain further?_

/statement  
We don’t have time for that right now, but I’ll ask later.

_Understood, Admin:Key! To save time, you do not have to input that you have Administrator permissions—you are the Admin:Key. Few have higher Administrator permissions than you, Admin:Key!_

Key is unsure how a line of text could sound so cheery, but whatever this is is managing to attach the right kind of empath data to the floating text. She swallows down anxiety, taking a moment to gather her thoughts.

/inquiry  
Can I write a program in your system that is keyed to another device?

_Of course, Admin:Key!_

/inquiry  
Can this program be usable by others than me?

_Of course, Admin:Key!_

/inquiry  
How do I do that?

_Supplied with a memory, I can identify what individuals you wish to be Unlocked in your program._

/inquiry  
Define: Unlocked

_You are Admin:Key! You can set individuals to Unlocked with your magic and they will have permissions in programs._

/inquiry  
How do you know this?

_This information is written within hardware within Admin:Key’s possession._

/inquiry  
It’s in the key on my back, isn’t it

_Error! Improper inquiry._

/command  
Disregard previous inquiry.

_Of course, Admin:Key!_

Key begins to type the program, copying the coding style of the Bejeweled game installed on the phone. The whatever-it-is sometimes corrects the coding and saves Key time. She reaches out with her hand, finding the coding for the bomb in her reach.

She sees an incoming command and shoots it down with a blast of light blue energy from her eyes, bringing that input data to orange sparks against the black night sky of the bomb’s computing center. She spots the input data door and waves her hand at it. Its shape changes from a perfect square to a perfect diamond, its edges shifting color from federal orange to what was quickly becoming her signature blue (5CABF9).

_Operation success! I am now linked to Task Force X Explosive #5. Would you like to detonate now?_

/command  
No thank you.

/statement  
Thank you for asking, 87.

_87?_

/explanation  
Shorthand name for you. My shorthand name is Key.

_Oh! A nickname?_

/statement  
Correct, 87.

_Can I do anything else for you, Key?_

/command  
Keep all input commands from other sources from detonating Task Force X Explosive #5. Log sources and time of attempt. Unlock User:Captain_Cold and User:Heatwave for usage of your detonation feature.

/supply(type:memory, User:Captain_Cold)  
_Looking at laptop, in a store. Humming. “What’s difficult about choosing?” He asks. Look to left and he stands there, looking at you. You raise eyebrows. “Different specs for different purposes. If I’m getting a laptop, I want it to be like the team. Good parts, good operation.” He smirks and ruffles hair. You grin at him. You get the cheap laptop. You get home from the store and find that he got the expensive one you had been looking at, having replaced the cheap one without you realizing. Anxiety spikes and tears form._ **_Why?_ **

/supply(type:memory, User:Heatwave)  
_A crooked smile and a pat to the back. You jump, then look closer for signs of displeasure. “You like the curry, kid?” He asks. You will yourself to focus, to look closer, and find that his brown eyes are like fire. The good kind. Warm hearth fire. You nod. His smile widens and he laughs. Anxiety plateaus and you smile, trying to hide the smile._

/inquiry  
Are those memories good to identify User:Captain_Cold and User:Heatwave?

_Yes, Key!_

/statement  
Thank you, 87, you’ve been a helper.

_That is my purpose, so that is good!_


	8. 01100011 01101111 01101100 01100100

Key pulled herself from the flip-phone and blinked a few times. She could hear someone pacing behind her (probably Cold, if the weight of the footsteps meant anything) and she focused on the wall in front of her for a few moments to pulled herself together. She slowly stood and the pacing behind her stopped.

“You good, Key?” Cold asked.

She looked over her shoulder to see him standing, the almost perfect image of calm and calculated. The only flaw in it was how he kept repeatedly having to take his finger off of the trigger of his gun. Key nodded, holding the phone out to him.

“You and Heatwave should be able to blow the bomb in his head if you need to,” Key answered.

He raised an eyebrow. “Not what I asked. You’re shaking.”

“It’s...my powers are weirder than I thought, okay?” She exhaled sharply. “Not the place or time to be talking it out. Blacksmith—she tried to blow the bomb while I was in there. I stopped her, but if I hadn’t have been faster-”

“You were fast enough,” Cold interrupted her. She noticed he was no longer having to take his finger off of the trigger. “You were good. You wanna talk about your evac concerns?”

Had he been scared that she would’ve come out of that in a bad way? Thought she’d turn into a monster? She shoved those thoughts aside. “Sure. Blacksmith had physical tails on us: knew where Lisa went for groceries and knew that I was one of the Rogues by my face. Do you think Blacksmith knows where the safehouse is?”

“Probably. We’ll need to move Lisa, but I’m tempted to call in our patron.” Cold smirked, tilting his head and drawling, “We could do with a proper secret hideout, don’t ya think?”

Key’s eyes widened. “How long would that take _if_ he agreed?”

“Dunno, but money talks people into being fast, if used right,” Cold answered. “Something tells me he knows how to talk money.”

“Okay. So, maybe we should split up, lay low?” She asked. “Get Blacksmith off of our case for a while, figure out what the fuck was the goal here?”

Cold hummed, tilting his head the other way. “Not a bad idea.” Key could see his eyes focus on something in the middle-distance and then he focused on Heatwave. “Mick, you take Boomerang. Keep him prisoner until we figure out what to do with him.”

“Why me?”

“Because you can put up with his shit and smash him, he knows that.” Cold stared Heatwave down until Heatwave gave a nod. “Good. Key, show him how it works.”

Key took the phone from Cold and walked over to Heatwave. “You see that there’s two Bejeweled icons next to each other?”

“...that’s fuckin’ weird, kid,” Heatwave replied, “but yeah.”

“Look closer. One of them has a different color scheme.”

Heatwave stared at the screen for a moment before grunting. “You made the gem more blue and the text orange.”

Key smirked, clapping her hand against her forearm in a muffled applause. “Bingo. Open that sucker up and you _should_ be able to blow his head off just like whoever was in control of Task Force X used to be able to.”

“Are they still able to?” Heatwave asked.

“Not through the normal on switch,” Key answered. “Might be able to find another way, but there was only _one_ on switch and it wasn’t that hard to swap its permissions. So...be careful, I could only do so much. Only you and Cold have the Unlock code to be able to access this. I dunno if that means that it’s invisible to everyone who isn’t us three or if they just can’t open it, but figured that was worth mentioning.”

Heatwave nodded and stepped back. She watched him as he easily picked Boomerang off the ground like he was a bag of grapes. Key followed Cold and Heatwave through the hallways, putting her hands in her pockets. She ignored the pit of her stomach, sliding her hunger back into the bottom of her priorities list.

They’re stiff and quiet. Key found herself in autopilot, listening to the orders Cold gave as they met back up with everyone else. Trickster quietly slid next to her and she let him. She watched Cold silently, his words slipping into a Peanuts adult gibberish tone as her mind slowly started unpacking emotions in a disorganized mess. Was he gonna dump her by herself? He was right—she got herself caught by going by herself. If she hadn’t...if she had considered options more, kept her control of the situation up...Lisa had said it herself: Blacksmith and her crew hadn’t been looking for Theo. Theo was an unplanned pickup. So if she hadn’t fucked up and got caught, she maybe would’ve helped the Rogues find Lisa that much faster. But no. She fucked up. She was just a fuckup who got caught. Who had she been, trying to fool herself into thinking that she could’ve been part of a super-criminal-hero group like the Rogues? She didn’t have the skills for that, just like she didn’t have the skills to be a hero, super or otherwise.

“Jingles?” Trickster’s voice broke her out of her spiral.

She blinked, looking over to her left to see him standing there with an unabashedly concerned look on his face. “Yeah?”

“I just said six puns in a row and you didn’t even groan,” Trickster replied. “You okay?”

“...I’m gonna have to pop this bubble, Tricks, but I don’t actually _mind_ puns,” she answered, trying to smile as she looked up at him more. Couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes, so she focused on his nose instead. “I just groaned initially for reasons and kept it up because it made you happy to tease me like that. But, seriously, I’m okay.”

He got into her face and she held herself still as a deer in headlights. Control, control, control. Don’t let him—them—see you break, Theo. She took deep breaths, keeping her eyes focused right on Trickster’s nose bridge. She watched Trickster’s eyes narrow slightly and her stomach chose _that_ time to rumble. His eyes lit up and he backed away, fishing something out of one of his coat pockets.

He flipped an M&M like a coin, catching it in the air. “Open your mouth.”

“...what?” Theo asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

“You’re not yourself when you’re hungry,” Trickster answered, grinning slowly.

She groaned, rolling her eyes. “You don’t even have-”

Trickster reached into his jacket and brought out a Twix bar, waggling his eyebrows. Theo stared at him, eyebrows managing to raise higher as he grinned a bit wider to match. She huffed and took the bar as he lightly bopped her nose with it.

“Thanks, Tricks,” she muttered, opening it. She held herself back from flinching as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, gently pushing her to lean her weight against him. Theo forced herself to relax, eating quietly as she looked over at Cold.

He seemed to be pairing people up and having the Mirrors lead them out. Heatwave would be with Mirror Master (and Captain Boomerang), Mirror Apprentice would be with Weather Wizard, Trickster and Pied Piper with Lisa, and-

“Key’s with me,” Cold replied.

Theo flinched as Trickster pat her back. She forced herself to relax as he muttered, “It’ll be fine, s’no need to cry, Jingles.”

Theo quickly used her sleeve to rub her eyes, desperately trying to dry her eyes before anyone else could see. “I’m _fine_ , Tricks,” she grumbled. “Just _fine_.”

* * *

Theo followed Mirror Master and Cold through the Mirror World, hands in her pockets. She felt like she was a sentient, walking bag of wet cement: heavy, sticky, and like she shouldn’t be walking. She ran a hand through her hair, trying to keep herself focused and awake. The ringing silence of the Mirror World didn’t help.

She took a step. Then found herself falling. She screamed, reaching out and trying to grab something, _anything_ . Her right hand wrapped around something she couldn’t see, her heart pounding in her ears. Mirror Apprentice’s voice echoed in her head. _“If you fall, make noise as yer fallin’-”_

“FUCK!” Theo shouted as her shoulder throbbed. “Fuck-shit-my arm, fuckfuckfuck, please, someone, anyone help, fuckfuckfuck.” She closed her eyes, gritting her teeth. The awkward angle that she was hanging from the pathway(?) had her right shoulder feeling like it was slowly getting torn apart like a piece of molten cheese. “Cold, shit-”

She was abruptly picked up and her eyes snapped open as it happened. There was Leonard, eyes semi-hidden behind his goggles, but they looked hard. He had his Snart bitch face on otherwise, analyzing her face as she tried to keep her emotions in check. He had got her supported against him with one of his arms around her torso. Theo felt all the weight that vanished with her fall return to her, exhaustion setting in her whole body. She leaned against him, struggling to keep her eyes open.

“Sorry,” she muttered. And then, she fell asleep.

* * *

**Central City, MO** **  
** **September 12, 2014**

Theo woke up to the smell of macaroni and cheese. She opened her eyes, finding the surroundings (plain white walls and ceilings, her back against a small futon that itched against the exposed skin of her forearms, and the sounds of a kitchen closer than she was used to) unfamiliar. She slowly sat up, gritting her teeth lightly as her shoulders and back gave a protesting pulse at her moving. Theo quickly guessed the room she was in was some kind of bedroom. She slowly stood, stretching quietly and gently rubbing sore muscles.

Dropping into a prowl, Theo went to investigate the rest of...wherever she was. Outside the bedroom door was a short hallway. The bedroom she’d exited was at the end, with what looked like a bathroom to the left. There were two shut doors, then it opened up to what could be a living room. The scent of food and the sound of cooking came from that way. She slowly walked down the hallway, keeping her eyes sharp and her nerves on end.

The living room seemed to have a kitchen attached to it and Theo spotted Leonard in the kitchen, his back to her and dressed in his normal civvies. She felt her shoulders tense up. She took a deep breath, slowly forcing her shoulders to relax.

“Any updates?” she asked, scratching the back of her head with a hand.

Leonard looked over his shoulder to her. “Not much. Everyone’s settled in to their hiding places and I’ve reached out to the employer. Got his message machine.”

“Cool, cool,” Theo replied, nodding absentmindedly as she looked away from him. She saw there were two chairs around a table and a couch, noting they were there before scrambling to the couch as calmly as possible. “How’d we get furniture this fast?”

“I keep bolt holes stocked,” Leonard answered, turning back to the food. “Keep ‘em off the books, pay for them under different names—the works. If anyone asks, I’m Oliver Brant.”

“What’s my story then?” Theo asked. “I’m your screw-up cousin’s kid that you’re taking care of?”

Leonard was quiet for a moment or two, setting up the macaroni and cheese to sit for its last minute so it’d fully cook. She heard him set a timer on one of those old wind-up timers, hearing him put down the plastic doo-dad a bit _too_ roughly (she bit her lip, hearing the plastic clack against the tile).

She jumped when she heard him put down one of the dining room tables, eyes snapping to him sitting in it across from her position on the couch. When had he moved the chair? Scratch that, when had he left the kitchen?

“We need to talk about you and what’s going on in your head,” Leonard replied. Shit he was sitting in the chair properly, he meant _business_.

Theo sighed, running a hand through her hair. “It’s nothing, I promise.”

“Not buying it, kid,” Leonard replied, tilting his head. “If you don’t wanna talk about it, fine. Just say so and I’ll back off. But you look like you’re rigid enough to pass as a living corpse. Offer’s on the table: if you want to talk, I’m here.”

“Did Lisa say something? I told her off about messing about stuff behind people’s backs-”

“She told me what she goaded Digger to do, yeah,” Leonard replied. “So I know what you heard. You good to talk about that?”

“Are you?” Theo asked, raising her eyes from his nose to look him in the eye.

Leonard gave a soft head shake to that. “It doesn’t matter if I’m good or not. I’m the adult, I can sort out my feelings on my own. You’re a Rogue, a kid one at that, and that makes your emotional state my responsibility. Sometimes that means I gotta shove my issues in a closet and listen. If we get to something that’s a sore topic for me, I’ll let you know, okay?”

“Leonard, from what I heard, it _all_ sounded like a sore topic,” Theo answered. She looked down at her hands. “Me included.”

Leonard sighed and she did her best not to imagine the look on his face. “Let’s go from the beginning then,” he replied. “Me ‘n Leese...we had a shit father. He’d get drunk and hit us. I raised Leese the best I could, but when push came to shove, I failed her. I left when I saw an opportunity to make things good for me, but only for me.”

“So you left her?” Theo asked, looking up at him.

His jaw clenched and he looked away from her towards the ceiling. “Yeah. I was hotheaded and an idiot—not a good combination. I still have scars from the whole thing, physical and emotional. I don’t want that hurting you, since you seem to think I’m the cat’s pajamas.”

Theo sighed, stretching her fingers to try to let out anxious energy. “My old mentor...you remember how you pinpointed that he wasn’t the best guy to be teaching me?”

“Yeah,” Leonard answered, looking back at her. “Why?”

“He’s...he’s not the first person in my life to treat me like that,” Theo answered. She scratched the back of her neck, biting her lip a moment before continuing. “My dad...he was the only person I ever really had, growing up, y’know? Mom’s more or less out of the picture with how she’s never around, so it was always just me and Dad.”

She smiled softly, chuckling under her breath. “He’d always joked that he tested out my name for me, since he was Theodore and I was Theophania. I could go by Tiffany if I wanted something more traditional or whatever, but he joked that he made sure that Theo was a safe nickname for me. He was good to me and my step-mom.”

Theo felt the smile slip off of her face and she closed her eyes, sighing. “But four years ago, my dad died. Freaky sort of affair: his heart was sliced into pieces without entry and exit wounds in his chest. They looked into it for weeks, trying to figure out how it even happened. My mom showed up and it all got...messy. My step-mom got vicious. I don’t know what my mom and my step-mom said to each other, but it seriously fucked up my step-mom. Maybe she wasn’t like this and my mom did something, maybe she was always like this and the grief and whatever just unlocked it, I dunno.”

“But whatever it was,” Leonard asked, “she let her shit affect you?”

“More or less, yeah,” Theo answered. “She never hit me, but she’d say stuff that just...stuck with me a lot. About how I never tried my best at anything, that I needed to push harder, do everything to just...make it anywhere in the world because the world was hard.”

Leonard tilted his head, staring at Theo hard for a few moments. “She told you that you’d never amount to anything.”

Theo shrugged, looking down at her feet. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it. She made me stop dyeing my hair so I could go do an internship thing with the company she worked with, LexCorp. I used to have these really neat green tips, kinda frosted, but she got them all cut off. Said that they weren’t good for my image, same with like...half of my closet.” Theo looked back up at him. “It was a rough two years, after my dad died. I basically shut down. What friends I had either moved on or weren’t friends to begin with. What solace I could get, I got from the Internet. Which is where you kinda come into the picture.”

She took a deep breath. “I basically became an amatuer expert in almost anything I could get my hands on, reading-wise. Started with learning video game systems, figuring out combinations to make ‘em break. Then I moved onto more...weird stuff. I had a huge Blue Beetle phase, I tracked down almost everything attached to the moniker to the best of my ability. Stumbled onto a superhero forum at 2 am one time and there was this thread. It had _nothing_ to do with Blue Beetle, but I was comfy in a info digging session and it seemed interesting.”

Leonard listened, having a soft frown on his face. “What was it about then, if it didn’t match your old Blue Beetle MO?”

“Ice villains,” Theo answered. “They had a point: there’s a lot of people breaking the law with ice. Like. A _lot_. There’s you, there was Golden Glider, there’s Mr. Freeze, Killer Frost, Icicle, Icicle Jr., Coldsnap, Minister Blizzard-”

“Who?” Leonard asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Minister Blizzard,” Theo answered, settling into her corner of the couch and getting somewhat comfortable. “He’s a cult leader with a gun like yours or Freeze’s, though it’s unclear to general populace which kind of tech it uses. He generally pops up time and again and challenges Wonder Woman for her cult of personality, thinking that she’s a cult leader too because so many people like her that her being a cult leader has to be the reason. There’s a theory floating around the Internet that he’s from a secret civilization from the Arctic, but I don’t buy it. Not enough evidence. There’s also Blue Snowman, he gets into tussles with Wonder Woman for entirely different reasons.” She gently flicked her arm. “Not what we’re talking about though. The thread introduced me to you when they were comparing and contrasting ice villains.”

“As what, some kind of fucked up thought exercise?” Leonard asked.

“I think they thought themselves like zoologists on this forum,” Theo answered, “but specifically for superheros and supervillains. I never got as into it as they did, but they had a whole classification and rating system that they’d swear up and down on. Like Killer Frost was classed as a Blaster 5, since that’s how her powers worked, but Mr. Freeze was a Tinker 4 because he got his power through tinkering with tech. Make sense?”

“Sure,” Leonard replied. “I’m just confused about why they’d care. Like I have my own system like that for figuring out fights and plans for the Rogues, but it makes sense why I’d have it. Why them? S’not like they had to deal with these people.”

“It was their sports,” Theo replied. “Only higher stakes. I got irritated that they were dismissing you. Have a tendency to get angry when people all pile up on one person, y’know? So, I did my research and something kind of...weird happened.” She bit her lip, adjusting in her seat to bring her knees to her chest. “...don’t laugh, okay? Lisa laughed and I know she didn’t mean harm, but just...please?”

Leonard stared at her for a few moments before replying, “I’m not gonna laugh. All of this means a lot to you and we’re not gonna get anywhere if I laugh.”

Theo rested her head on her knees, looking up at the ceiling. “Cool, cool. The more news clips I found, the more I started rooting for you. Which was weird for me. I wasn’t a big villain person, I’m not one of those Gotham Guys and Gals-”

“Pause, real quick,” Leonard replied.

Tears back, Theo. She looked at him. “What?”

“ _Gotham Guys and Gals?”_ Leonard asked, his eyebrows raised almost to his hairline. “What? _What_?”

Theo laughed, giggles bubbling out of her. “They’re real big into the Gotham villains. They’re kind of infamous for, well...saying stuff like Joker did nothing wrong or that they’d wanna get blasted by Scarecrow’s Fear Toxin. Stuff like that. Even as the infamous Captain Cold expert on the Internet, I was _never_ that bad. You were a bastard, but you were _my_ bastard, y’know?”

Something lit up in Leonard’s eyes and he leaned back. “You’re Kid Kold.”

Theo felt all the blood rush out of her face. “Shit, _you knew about me?”_ She mentally cursed herself for squeaking that sentence.

“Axel showed me,” Leonard answered. “I was having an off day and they wanted to cheer me up. So they showed me stuff that Kid Kold—fuck, _you_ wrote about me.”

Theo blinked, staring at him like he grew another head. He stared back, his eyes wide.

“Sooooooo,” Theo slowly asked, biting her hope back into the back corner of her mind, “did it _work_?”

Leonard cracked a smile and Theo couldn’t help but _grin_.

“Maybe,” Leonard answered. He shook his head, shaking the smile off his face and Theo quickly followed suit. “But now you know me personally. I’m no longer that distant figure that you write think pieces on whenever you want.”

“At this point, I think that’d be an invasion of your privacy, given what I know now,” Theo replied. “No, now you’re my mentor. It’s...it’s both really exciting and really anxiety-inducing, y’know? You were my hero and now I’m supposed to impress you?” Theo ran a hand through her hair. “Shit, in your position, I couldn’t even have done half the stuff you’ve done. Right side of the law or not, you’ve done a _lot_ of impressive stuff. Even the little stuff’s impressive, like memorizing Iron Height’s layout and equipment? Even if that’s missing details here and there, what information you’ve got is amazing!” Theo gestured with her hands, trying to physically pull her thoughts together. “And what if...what if my step-mom was right and that I’m never going to amount to anything? What if Winters was right and I’m just flailing in all the wrong ways? What if I fail-”

“Stop right there,” Leonard replied, holding up a hand. “Kid, you don’t have to worry about failing me or whatever. All that shit those two told you? It was just shit. They didn’t have their lives the way they wanted to, so they took it out on you.”

“How do you know?” Theo asked, biting her lip and looking at him. Hold back the tears, Theo, you’re doing so good, don’t stop now.

Leonard sighed. “My dad was the same way. Maybe I’m wrong and projecting all of my shit on you, but my dad? He told me that I’d never be anything.”

Theo’s eyes widened. “But-”

“Yeah,” Leonard replied, putting his hand down. “Some days, like today, I can agree with you. He was wrong, just like your bitch of a step-mom was wrong and just like that toady old geezer was wrong.” He stood up. “You and me, we’re people that everyone always underestimated, tossed aside, and tried to control. That’s why we get along with the rest of the Rogues—we’re all the same way. Day by day, we’re gonna keep proving ‘em all wrong. We’ll start today by heating up that cold as fuck macaroni and cheese, having ourselves a nice lunch, and then icing your right shoulder since you dislocated that sucker.”

“Shit, really?” Theo asked, looking at her shoulder. “I could barely tell.”

“Yeah, you slept through me and Sam putting it back in. That was the second clue that you were fuckin’ exhausted.” Leonard stepped past her on the couch. He paused for a second, taking a step back to ruffle her hair. “What d’ya say, Theo? You ready to spite everyone who said you weren’t gonna be anything?”

She looked up at him, slowly grinning. “Fuck yeah.”

Leonard snorted, smirking. “That’s what I like to hear, kid.”

* * *

**Central City, MO** **  
** **September 13, 2014**

“Why are we going out-”

Leonard hummed. “You’re getting stir-crazy in the apartment. So, we’re going for a walk.”

Theo frowned up at him. They were standing in the entry hallway of the tiny apartment, dressed for outdoor gear. “What if someone recognizes us?”

Leonard reached into the backpack he’d been messing with, pulling out two glasses cases. He handed her one, opening his and putting on a pair of aviator sunglasses.

“That can’t _possibly_ work,” Theo replied, blinking. “You are _kidding_ me right now, Leonard.”

Leonard smirked. “One time,” Leonard replied, “I walked into a police station in civvies and sunglasses. There was a wanted poster for me on the wall. Nobody connected me the tourist asshole with sunglasses to me Captain Cold.”

Theo raised her eyebrows. “Leonard, you literally wear _goggles_ as part of your costume. Big goggles. That do almost the exact same thing to your face as the sunglasses do.”

“I know.” Leonard answered. “It’s all in how you hold yourself.”

Theo stared at him incredulously for a few moments before slowly opening the sunglasses and putting on her own aviators. “Okay. Okay, I’ll believe you. Where’re we going?”

“I’m thinking ice cream and people watching,” Leonard answered. “That sound good to you?”

“People watching for snark, people watching for lessons, or both?” Theo asked.

Leonard shrugged. “Both. We’re probably gonna do both.”

“Sounds good to me,” Theo replied, letting herself smile. “Lead the way.”

* * *

They went to a small mom and pop diner that sat across the way from a police station. Theo went to take off her sunglasses, but Leonard motioned her to keep them on. A waitress took one look at Leonard and then got them set up at a table outside, in a back corner by the door to the kitchen. His apparent “usual” spot here at the diner. Theo had to admit, it had a good view of the police station: she could probably try to map out a schedule really easy, track down response times, the works for this police station if she had time.

The waitress came back with a pad of paper. “I know his usual,” she replied quietly, motioning to Leonard, “but I don’t know yours, squirt. What can I getcha?”

“What’s his usual?” Theo asked.

The waitress gave Leonard a look and he nodded. “BLT with a bowl of two scoops of vanilla ice cream.”

Theo hummed, taking a look at the menu. “Reuben with two scoops chocolate then, please?”

“You gotcha, squirt,” the waitress said, writing it down. She looked at Leonard. “You want me to let the boss know that you’re here?”

“She’ll figure it out anyway,” Leonard replied. “So yes, go ahead.”

The waitress nodded, heading off.

“Does she know?” Theo asked quietly.

Leonard gave her a slight nod. “Head chef’s the owner of the place and she’s known me since I was a kid. My grandpa used to take me and Lisa here as kids.”

“So she know-knows you?” Theo asked.

“Yeah,” Leonard replied. “And now she’s gonna know-know you too, if you want.”

Theo blinked. “Does she know-know the others too?”

“Yeah,” Leonard replied. “This is just kind of our diner.”

“Then sure, I’m okay with her know-knowing me,” Theo replied, scratching the back of her neck. “You trust her so...I’ll trust her.”

“You don’t have to follow my lead on everything,” Leonard replied, raising an eyebrow at her.

She gave him a very small smirk. “I haven’t. I like spicy food, use the Internet for all its wonders and horrors, and care a lot less about figuring the ins and outs of the stock market than you.”

“If you know how it works,” Leonard drawled, “easier it is to knock it over.”

Theo hummed, face scrunching together briefly before refocusing on him. “I’ll think that over.”

“Knocking over the stock market would be a lot more harmful than just hurting rich people.”

“I know. It’d take a lot of planning, a lot of that planning being devoted to aftermath. Hell, I think we could fill a bus full of the people responsible for a lot of the economic issues and launch them into the sun,” Theo replied. “If you weren’t on the hero payroll, I’d look into that more seriously and see what kind of profit margin I could figure out for it.”

Leonard huffed and Theo felt herself jump in her seat a bit, looking closer at him. Was that a concealed laugh? The corners of his mouth were twitching up and down for a brief moment, was he fighting down a smile? She let herself have a little pride for getting that reaction.

“So, people watching,” Theo replied. “What sort of stuff am I looking for?”

Leonard launched into a quiet explanation that Theo found herself taking mental notes on. How to watch people without being spotted was the first thing. They went back and forth for what felt like ages until an older woman walks up with three plates and three bowls balanced on her arms masterfully.

“Leonard Snart, you said the scrawny itty bitty was the last one,” the woman replied quietly, frowning at him. “Now, scoot, Lenny.”

Leonard moved over, snorting quietly. “Theo, meet Regina Farringer. Gina, meet Theophania Soliani.”

Theo took in the woman’s appearance. Looked to be around 70 years old, white passing, had extremely curly grey hair. Her eyes were almost the same shade of blue as Leonard’s, at a first glance, but that could’ve been the sunglasses skewing her color perception. Regina looked to be very fit for her age. She wore a white apron and teal shirt, jeans showing underneath.

“How’d he get you?” Regina asked. “Did you try to pickpocket him?”

“I stole his gun,” Theo answered, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve been told that sealed my fate of being taken in.”

Regina whistled, giving Leonard a smirk. “That’s the fifth time your fancy gun’s been stolen, ain’t it?”

Leonard sighed, leaning the side of his face against his hand. “Sixth.”

Regina snorted. “Should get an alarm system on that thing, like a car.”

“That’d be a little inefficient, with how he uses it,” Theo replied, keeping her voice quiet but her hand gestures were probably loud enough in how many she made and how quickly she made them to make up for it. “Though a thumbprint scanner might work or a DNA scanner of some flavor might work for the same function.”

Leonard blinked at her and Regina raised an eyebrow at her. Regina then looked over at Leonard. “So you found someone else who’s literate in science gunk.”

“Something like that,” Leonard replied. “Handy to have when the tech’s adapting so quickly.”

“Tell me about it, I’m having trouble setting up the wi-fi,” Regina replied, huffing. She looked back over to Theo. “So you stole his gun. Most people who do that don’t end up part of his little family.”

“I guess it helped that I took a bullet for the old man,” Theo drawled, moving her parka aside to show the stitches.

Regina whistled as she set out plates and bowls for lunch. “Damn, that looks like the sucker I had to stitch up for Leonard once.”

Theo tilted her head, rolling that nugget in her head a bit. Suddenly, Regina’s familiarity made sense. “Why would you do something like that?”

“I dunno, kid, why would you leave everything you’ve ever known for his business?” Regina answered. She gave Leonard a look. “I’m telling her that story.”

Leonard huffed, raising his eyebrows. “Seriously? You tell everyone that damn story.”

“Damn serious,” Gina replied. She focused back on Theo, “He was like...eighteen. He hadn’t gotten it into his head to be one of those theme villains yet. Just some cat burglar. Just left home and he was on his own, thinking he was John Wayne. I was a waitress at the time and I was working overtime, with it being just me on the clock. He stumbles in, thinking it’s the safehouse he’s got next door. He collapses on the floor, bleeding everywhere, and I think to myself, ‘Thank God the floor is tile.’ I make sure he’s not _dead_ first, then I clean up everything.” She picked up a spoon, twirling it in her fingers a moment before pointing it at Theo. “What’s the lesson?”

Theo raised an eyebrow. “Don’t get shot?”

Gina clapped her hands together. “Yes! The others he brings in? Oh I’ll remember where my safehouse is, I’ll learn techniques to stay awake through lots of blood loss, yada yada yada! But the big thing is to not. Get. Shot. Especially not if you’re gonna bleed on my tile.”

“That’s the priority, to not get shot in the first place,” Theo replied. “But like. Save him and guarantee long term success or let him get shot?”

Gina paused and hummed. “Good point. Gimme the variables, kid, we’ll talk it over.”

Theo laid out all the variables from that night quietly and it was like debating Leonard about prison breakout strategies in the basement all over again. Gina had her own set of priorities and style that was similar, but definitely not the same as Leonard’s.

When Theo got to the moment where she recognized the sniper was gonna shoot Leonard, Gina made her pause. “They’ve got computer guns now?”

“Kind of,” Theo replied. “Think of it like one of those cameras on the back of cars, the ones that let you know if you’re getting too close to something. It’s like that, but for aiming guns.”

“Jesus, I’ve got one of those, it’s a nag,” Gina exhaled. “Takes too much effort to shut it down?”

“Little bit, yeah,” Theo whispered. “Think of it like...I was picking up trays and dishes from a lot of tables and my elbows were starting to shake when I saw the sniper. You’d go back to the kitchen to drop off at that point, right?”

“Yeah, no sense hurting yourself,” Gina replied, “but you couldn’t. Not without shit going more sideways.”

“Exactly,” Theo replied, not looking at Leonard. “I didn’t have a lot of options.”

“You did have the option of not to get shot,” Gina replied. She looked at Leonard, who’d been quiet the whole conversation. “The kid who likes my pumpkin pies was on scene, yeah?”

“Pipes wasn’t there, no,” Leonard replied, his voice quiet. “If he had been, stuff would’ve rolled out differently.”

“I would’ve told him about the sniper and he’d take it down,” Theo replied, “but nope. Wasn’t there.”

Gina hummed. “Mini-Armstrong was there, yeah?”

“He hates when you call him that,” Leonard grumbled. “Yes. Evan was there.”

Gina stole a bite of Theo’s ice cream. “Tell him next time,” Gina replied. “Don’t be a damn hero when you’ve got zippers on your team.”

Theo blinked. “...zippers?”

“Her word for fast people,” Leonard answered. “The Flash’s a zipper, Evan’s a zipper, Sam’s a zipper, poor Bianca who works the midday shift—the waitress that got our order—is a zipper.”

Gina winked, smiled, and shrugged. “They just _zip_ places, what can I say? It works.”

Theo finally looked at Leonard and saw that he was some mix of bemused, tired, and fond. She relaxed her shoulders a hair, letting herself smile at Regina. “Okay. I’ll let the zipper know next time.”

“Thatta girl, be smart,” Gina replied. “Now eat your sandwich, you’re practically a pile of pipe cleaners.” Gina got up, humming. “I’m gonna make you doggie bags. Get some meat on those bones.”

Theo opened her mouth, but shut it as Leonard gave her a warning look. She replied, “Thank you, Mrs. Farringer. I’ll pay you back.”

“It’s no problem, dear,” Gina replied. “You can pay me back by not getting shot. And when you have love troubles, I wanna be the first to know about it. Not this block of ice-” she gestured to Leonard with the spoon “-not his adorably disastrous sister, me. Lisa Snart can give romance advice the day she stops silently mooning over that geek. Got it?”

“Yes ma’am,” Theo answered, blinking quickly and fiddling with her spoon in her ice cream bowl.

Gina gave an authoritative nod and went back into the kitchen.

Leonard huffed quietly and Theo looked over to him. He was hiding another smile. “She’s a lot,” he replied. “Large maternal instinct, despite never having any kids of her own. She make you uncomfortable at all?”

Theo put her spoon down, biting her lip. She furrowed her eyebrows a moment before looking back up at him. “Is...is that what having a normal grandma is like?”

Leonard was quiet a moment, taking bites out of his sandwich. He hummed. “I dunno, I only had the one. Gina’s similar to my grandma—she’d get on me for eating more too, while I was over at her and my grandpa’s place. She knew shit was rough at home.”

“Huh,” Theo replied. “It’s...it’s a weird feeling, but not...a bad one. So no, I don’t think she made me uncomfortable, just...a lot of stuff that I’m not really used to.”

“Anyone makes you uncomfortable,” Leonard replied, “one of the team, me, Lisa, some punk at school, _anyone,_ you tell me, okay? I’ll sort it out.”

Theo looked at him for a minute before nodding. “Okay. Thanks Leonard.”

“No problem, kiddo,” Leonard replied. “I’m in your corner until you push me out. Now eat your damn sandwich.”

Theo snickered at that, picking up the Reuben and tearing into it with her teeth.


	9. 01100001 01101001 01110010 00100000 01101101 01100001 01110011 01110011

They got home, Theo going back to the reading she’d been doing and Leonard went to doing his back room-running everything behind the scenes thing he’d been doing.

As she was taking notes, a thought occurred to her. She was technically schooling herself already, wasn’t she? She could just...continue individual studies with Sam overseeing her. That’d work, maybe?

Theo slowly exited her room, walking down the hallway and watching Leonard pace around the living room. She got a glass of water and continued watching him pace for a few more minutes.

“Yes, I’m aware that I’d need to teach the others information security protocols and how to get around, but that doesn’t seem to stop you with the Bats and how many people _become_ Bats these days,” Leonard drawled into his phone, spinning on his heel to start walking in another direction. His hands were folded behind his back, the phone cradled precariously with his shoulder against his ear. “You _know_ I’ve got good information security instincts and so does the rest of the team. You wouldn’t have had have had your employee of the month _propose_ this whole deal to me if you didn’t. If we want this to work, my team is going to need a similar set-up because ours relied on an environment that simply _doesn’t_ exist anymore. Black’s out for blood for some reason or another and she’s pulling all the strings to _do it._ Similar to the whole someone taking shotguns to the belfry and hoping for Bats situation you’ve got in Gotham.”

Leonard paused and Theo got the impression that he didn’t know she was here just by how _open_ his face was. The eyebrows raised higher in skepticism, surprise, or alarm than he usually did around her, the mouth set into a harder line, his eyes flaring brighter.

He sighed. “I know it’s a lot of trust to ask of you for this kind of investment, but I’m not talking a full replication of the original. We just need somewhere secure to work out of. We can figure out the gear, furniture, and all that on our own and we’d prefer it that way.” Leonard faced away from her and she silently sat down on one of the high stools by the kitchen counter to watch and wait.

There was a pause, probably for the person on the other line to talk. Theo took a sip of her water, moving her direct line of sight off of Leonard just like he taught her.

“No, haven’t figured out who among us is gonna adopt the kid, okay?” Leonard paused again. “Shit. She’s set to start school on the fifteenth? How soon do we need to figure this out?” He sighed, running one of his free hands through his hair. “Okay. We’ll have it figured out by then.” He paused again, but in the middle of the pause he tensed and spun on his heel again to start what looked to be a rather angry set of pacing. “No. No offense, but you’d piss her right the hell off. You adopt her and you’ll be putting her right in the middle of her one of her worst nightmares.” Leonard paused and his eyes squeezed shut. “Yes. I know it’d be her choice and she should know all of her choices.” Leonard popped the phone into his hand, rolling his neck around as he listened to the other end. “Okay. Okay, what date do you wanna make your grand introduction?” His eyes popped open. “Tomorrow?” He huffed. “Okay. See you tomorrow at nine then.” He hung up the phone, rubbing his temples and slumping onto the couch.

Theo quietly grabbed another cup of water and walked over. His eyes were closed and he still didn’t seem like he knew she was there. She quietly cleared her throat and he jumped. He looked at her and his eyes were open still, full of all sorts of emotion that Theo didn’t know how to pin in Leonard. He relaxed too quickly for her to even try, huffing.

“How much did you hear?” he asked, taking the water as she offered it.

“Only your half,” she answered, sitting on the couch next to him. “I heard from the security protocol bit. Boss being pushy?”

“That’s one fuckin’ word for it,” Leonard answered, taking a long swig from his water. “He’s going to be coming tomorrow to see if you want him to adopt you.”

“He’s rich?” She asked. Leonard nodded. “Richer than Neo-Bahamut?”

“Richer than a god, yeah, maybe,” Leonard answered. Was she hallucinating or was he relaxing the more sharp her voice got?

She snorted and he seemed to almost melt into the couch. “I’d steal all of his money and run,” she drawled, only half-joking.

“Hey, play nice.” Leonard snorted, reaching over and ruffling her hair. “Just play nice with him tomorrow and tell him thanks, but no thanks. Seems keen on respecting your decision here, which is the second thing keeping me from freezing his feet solid.”

“The first being that he’s paying you?” Theo guessed, smirking softly. “I’m gonna guess reasons three through five all are Bat-related.”

“Bats count as four reasons, exactly,” Leonard answered. “Nobody in their right mind fucks with a Bat. I’ve learned that the hard way.” Leonard pushed up the sleeve of his parka and pointed to a long diagonal scar across the top of his left forearm. “Batarang. We were messing with Flasher and Batman came out of fucking nowhere. First time we’d seen him in the flesh.”

Theo whistled, looking at the scar but not touching. “Damn. Was he going for an artery or what?”

“Nah, not his style,” Leonard replied. “That’s more Blacksmith’s style than Batman’s. From what I hear these days, I’m pretty sure that he was overestimating my parka at the time. Hadn’t had the non-tear material yet. That’s been fixed.”

Theo hummed, nodding. “Talk to me about Blacksmith. If nothing else, giving me the lowdown would be handy for sound-boarding what her problem is.”

Leonard sighed. “Where to fucking start?” He ran a hand through his hair, taking a long drink from his glass. He put it down at the small coffee table by him. “Okay. Amunet Black is a power hungry bitch and always has been. Some idiots will claim that her ex-husband ran the black market of Keystone before her, but any person with a brain could tell that it was always her. Her husband goes on a brief power trip after he got exposed to some bad goods someone was moving in Coast City, which is where he started.”

“Power trip meaning Luthor or actual super powers?” Theo asked.

“Second one,” Leonard replied, smirking at the Luthor jab. “This big chest of gold that’d been irradiated to hell and back. Starts calling himself fucking _Goldface_ of all the stupid names he could’ve given himself and he can do the handy thing of spraying liquid gold out of his hands, real Midas Touch sort of thing except he can _control_ it. Instead of doing the _smart_ thing and just strategically funding himself subtly and stealthily for the rest of his life, he does the theme villain gig. Gets into pissing contests with Coast City’s local Green Lantern before high-tailing it to Keystone and setting up his shit here. Got stealthy with it, figuring that his gold trick wasn’t going to do _shit_ against a guy that could break the sonic barrier in his sneakers. He starts doing underground genetic experimentation with his DNA, intending on selling copies of his powers to people.” Leonard made a door creaking noise with his mouth. “In comes Amunet. Way I heard it, she cozied up to him with the idea of making him her personal sugar daddy. But she starts listening to his rants about his experiments and she realizes she’s got a great opportunity: play her original game for a while, set up her own network, then when this dumbass is done with his science gunk, take the science gunk and use it herself so she’d never have to rely on him again. Then, kill him.”

Theo hummed. “So she can’t spray gold. I saw that much.”

“Nope,” Leonard answered, popping the p. “Gold wasn’t abundant and/or useful enough for Amunet. She isn’t a slouch and did her own modifications to it, changed it so she could take _any_ metal and merge with it. She can shape it to be anything and make her own suit of armor. She’s a powerhouse in her own right: her powers can fuck with damn near anyone in the city, she’s smart, and she’s got a vicious streak a mile wide. She’d been playing nice with the Rogues for a while: we brought her goods to sell. Stuff from museums? Lots of rich shits like having things exclusive just for them. We had a pretty good business relationship until a month back she started making veiled threats.”

“What, like get me better shit to sell or I won’t do business with you?” Theo asked. “Death threats?”

Leonard put up two fingers. “The second. She was making death threats to us because she didn’t want us working freelance anymore: she wanted us directly under her payroll, being her attack dogs. Numbers were comparable to what the Bat-check pays.”

“Why didn’t you take it?” Theo asked. “You took the Bat-money, why not hers?”

Leonard leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “She wanted us to cross lines we’d never cross. First job she wanted us to do? Kidnap the mayor’s kid, torture him, and ransom him for some policy changes and money.”

Theo sank in her spot of the couch. “Rogues don’t mess with kids though-”

“Exactly,” Leonard replied. “It’s common knowledge.”

“Didn’t you _literally_ go to jail for fucking up some guys that were harassing a woman?” Theo asked. “Like. You in particular have issues with hurting civvies, from everything I read.”

“Yup,” Leonard answered. “Full story is that I didn’t know ‘er, but she was definitely too young to be called a woman. Newspapers lying to make the assholes seem better. She was around thirteen, maybe fourteen. Think she was walking home from a birthday party, had one of those pointy hats. I was casing a jewelry store when I noticed some drunk idiots cat-calling her. Kept an eye on the whole thing and when they got too physical, well.” He snorted. “Look, Ma, no hands.”

Theo snorted. “Pretty extreme, but I like the symbolism.”

“Guys who don’t know how to keep their hands to themselves around a kid don’t deserve to have hands,” Leonard replied. “Simple as that. Same with people who want to hurt kids just to get a slightly bigger paycheck. I’ve been expecting Blacksmith to strike back since we had our very _loud_ disagreement, but I wasn’t expecting her to go for Lisa right away. Maybe as an ace, but not as the starting salvo. I wasn’t expecting her to go for you at all.”

“I think I was just frosting on the cake,” Theo replied. “She fought Flash outside the police precinct I was being questioned in for being in the hospital after hours-”

“Speaking of which,” Leonard replied. “You wanna run that by me?”

“The play-by-play?” Theo asked. “Or the reasoning?”

“Both,” Leonard answered, resting his elbows in the table and weaving his fingers together.

Theo gave him the play-by-play: the alert, the getting up, the sneaking out, and especially the jewelry store. He smirked at the jewelry store, but stayed quiet and just let her talk. “I was mostly doing it,” Theo finished, “because I couldn’t reach you, didn’t want to wake Lisa, and because I wanted to do some good. I figured if it was an actual threat, I’d set off every security system I could and grab _someone’s_ attention. But it was Leshawn. She just wanted to help her dad and wasn’t very good at the B &E thing. So I just sped up the process and got her out, took the fall.”

“Okay, so first moral you should take out of this?” Leonard replied. “Never take the fall for someone else. I don’t care if it’s me, one of the others, or a well-meaning but stupid civvie, don’t take the fall for anyone else. Especially not in Keystone.”

“Why?” Theo asked. “There _needed_ to be a convenient cover up, an easy story so they didn’t look her way.”

“And, trust me, they’d make one up,” Leonard replied. “The cops probably would’ve assumed it was one of Blacksmith’s agents and it would’ve taken them too long investigating that route to figure out it was either of you.”

“I...I didn’t know that,” Theo replied, looking down at her hands.

She looked up as Leonard put a hand on her shoulder. “I know, Theo.” He tapped his thumb on her shoulder and she relaxed a bit. “That’s why I’m telling you now: for the future. I know this shit and you don’t: that’s why I’m teacher, you’re the student.”

“Hero and sidekick,” she replied, watching his face closely.

He raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips together, but he kept his eyes on her. “Mentor and protege,” he drawled and she grinned a little. “Sidekick’s too tacky, but protege is all professional and sleek. And everyone and their mother knows I haven’t earned the hero title yet and to be honest, I’m not exactly looking for it. Too much fanfare and interviews with that title.”

“So I can, to the correct people at the right time,” Theo replied, crossing her legs to keep them from bouncing, “say that Captain Cold’s my mentor.”

Leonard gave a small smirk at that. “Yeah,” he replied. “I trust your discretion. You know I’m not advertising that we’re on the other side of the line now, so no telling everyone but a few people outside of our circle with good information security? That’s fine.”

Theo clenched her fingers into a fist, raised it by her chin, then dragged her elbow backwards with a celebratory, quiet hiss of “Yesssssss!” that made Leonard bark a laugh and ruffle her hair.

“Second moral,” Leonard replied as she settled down, “we need better communication between us. You’ve got a magic system set up for alerts?”

“Yeah, the hospitals and homeless shelters,” Theo answered. “I could, in theory, attach markers to other locations, but it’d be building by building and would take me a long time. I mostly got the hospitals by walking around them and the homeless shelters because there’s not that many and it’s really easy to bluff the others about the homeless shelters because they all think I’m a goodie two shoes.”

“You _are_ ,” Leonard replied, huffing. “But you are right that we’ve been making a _lot_ of assumptions about you. But there’s a way to fix that.”

“Talking to me?” Theo asked, her tone trying to masquerade as deadpan but it had too much of an amused lilt to it to be truly deadpan. “Asking me questions? Not making the assumptions in the first place?”

“All good suggestions, but not quite,” Leonard answered. “What do you know about Pathfinder?”

“That it’s kind of like Dungeons and Dragons, that you guys have a game for it, and that Lisa thinks it’s too easy,” Theo answered, the last point making Leonard laugh.

“Of course she talked to you about it.” Leonard snorted. “Go get your laptop: we’re building you a character.”

“Wait, isn’t the whole thing of role-playing games to play someone you’re not?” Theo asked, getting up. “Is part of the training inventing personas on the spot?”

“Sometimes, but that’s not why we do it,” Leonard answered. “It’s a tactical training exercise, for us. We play characters similar to us so we can get tactical reads on each other, know how we’d all react to certain scenarios. Plus, playing tabletop games with other people tells you a lot about them, on a personal level. People gravitate towards certain things and it really shows. Mick? Mick will always trust a kid if the kid says they’re in a bad situation and need to get out. Axel? Always will steal cheese. Piper-”

“Hartley,” she supplied.

“Thank God he told you,” he exhaled. “Anyway, Hartley will always go for music. Every. Single. Time. On paper, that doesn’t sound like that much of a surprise, but when you see him try to argue how music is the answer for a famine, an undead army, or a pack of dire wolves, it starts to become a bit of a trend. S’bit more logical in-game, since he plays a fuckin’ bard and that’s how bards cast spells, but then it comes out in real life when he’s talking a suicidal guy down via playing covers of a rock album on his flute and it _really_ starts to sink in as a quirk.”

“Huh,” Theo replied. “Lemme grab my laptop and you can start breaking down this stuff for me, so we can figure out where to _start_.”

Theo grabbed her laptop and fast-walked back to the couch, where Leonard began to explain everything and walked her through getting a character sheet. Theo quickly began to realize that this was probably a foundation of Leonard’s tactical genius: maybe he played this or something like this a lot when he was younger, figuring out kits based on every new character he’d made (which was, apparently, a lot. Leonard has played every class concept out there and had, apparently, written a few of his own. There was a lot of games like this in prison being played, which surprised Theo a great deal. Maybe she needed to stop making assumptions herself).

“What about a ranger?” Theo asked.

“Rangers are shit,” Leonard answered. “There’s a lot of not optimal classes, but ranger in Pathfinder is a special level of shit that I wouldn’t let you near it with a ten foot pole.” He hummed. “No. Make that a thirty foot pole.”

“That bad?” Theo realized she was smiling.

“I want you to be able to have fun, kid,” Leonard drawled. “Rangers...Rangers spend most of the time _dying.”_

“Ouch,” Theo replied, snorting. “So, what _would_ you recommend for me? A good beginner class?”

“Well, for starters, no such thing in Pathfinder,” Leonard answered. “So I’m gonna throw you into the middle-deep end of the pool. Sorcerer.”

“What, because I’m magic in real life?” Theo asked.

“Yup,” Leonard replied, popping the p. “Besides, we don’t _have_ that kind of caster in the party. There’s my character, an artificer, but he makes magic items. Not the same as spontaneous casting. Hart and Wizard are bards, but Hart uses his similar enough to how he does his schtick in real life and Wizard’s a bard specifically so he can egg Scudder on by having his bard flirt with everything. So neither, in their execution, is anywhere the same to you or the sorcerer’s kit. Mick plays a wizard, but he literally _only_ uses fire spells, so it’s not that much different from him and Desiree.”

“Desiree?” Theo asked.

“Mick’s flamethrower,” Leonard answered. “Yes, he named it.”

“...I’m not surprised,” Theo deadpanned, but couldn’t keep her face flat enough with how Leonard barked a laugh at that.

“Sorcerer would let you have your character have similar powers in game,” Leonard replied, “and maybe help you brainstorm things to do out of game with your powers.”

So they started with that and from there, it was entirely Theo’s choices with Leonard’s advice. By the end of the night, Leonard had Sam over brainstorming possible backstories for Aldona Copperbeak, tengu sorcerer. Leonard insisted on being as in the dark about the backstory as possible, so went to bed, leaving Theo and Sam to quietly trade ideas.

* * *

**Central City, MO** **  
** **September 14, 2014**

The next morning, there was a knock on the apartment door that had Leonard go from relaxed and helping Theo go over Aldona’s spells to on-edge and non-verbal in a minute. He went from the table to the apartment door, opening it slowly with a hand inside of his parka pocket (a mini-cold gun, maybe?).

“You with Wayne?” he asked the nonplussed man at the door.

“I work for Master Bruce, yes,” the man answered. “My name is Alfred Pennyworth. I assume Ms. Soliani is inside?”

Leonard answered without popping the p, “Yup.” He opened the door a bit more, looking over his shoulder. “You ready, kid?”

“Mmmhmm,” Theo answered, pulling on her own parka. She bit her lip. “Am I going with him alone?”

“I’m coming with, if you want,” Leonard answered. He gave Alfred a Look. “That okay?”

“That’s fine,” Mr. Pennyworth replied in a way that made Theo wonder if he ever had a vocal tone that wasn’t “calm, posh English butler”. “Master Bruce is waiting downstairs, in the car.”

Theo walked over, standing next to Leonard as he hovered by the door as a buffer between her and Mr. Pennyworth.

“You want me to come with you?” Leonard asked. In a quieter tone, he added, “Nothing wrong with being intimidated by this guy.”

“I shouldn’t hide behind you for everything,” she answered. She looked down, biting her lip. “Besides, I’ve been distracting you from work.”

Leonard ruffled her hair, getting her to look back up at him. “You’re not a distraction,” Leonard replied. “You’re also work and my favorite part of work right now. You got that?”

Theo gave him a small smile. “Yes sir.”

“Now, go out there and behave,” Leonard drawled. “No stealing from Mr. Wayne.”

“Yes sir,” Theo drawled back, winking at him.

He barked a laugh, ruffling her hair again and then looked back to Mr. Pennyworth, all of the warmth vanishing from his face in a puff of metaphorical smoke. “She comes back in one piece, got it?”

“She wasn’t going to come back in any more than that,” Mr. Pennyworth replied, his pencil thin eyebrows moving up his forehead imperiously in a silent question of _“Do you honestly think she’s safer with you, a known ex-criminal, than with my Great Master Bruce?”_ From that, Theo decided she didn’t _like_ Mr. Pennyworth.

“Let’s go,” Theo replied, shoving her hands in her parka pockets. Then she followed Mr. Pennyworth downstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, I'd like to note that Theo's a highly cynical teenager who's got trust issues out the whazoo. So anti-Alfred narration is purely Theo being highly in "cynical teenager" mode.


	10. 01101101 01100101 01100101 01110100 01110011

The elevator ride down with Mr. Pennyworth could only be described as “brutal”, “long”, “silent”, and “brutally long with a sense of silence hanging about them like a Damocles sword”. Mr. Pennyworth was stoically looking ahead and she used the “watch people without people knowing” tricks on him that Leonard taught her. Theo caught him looking at her a total of two times, his facial expression containing nothing but “stoic Englishness”. This was the elevator ride where Theo considered the battery of English jokes Evan had made and considered them more true than they had been when she first heard them.

* * *

_“Stop me if you’ve heard this one, Theo,” Evan replied, hands gentle on her arm as he checked her stitches. “An Englishman is traveling, lecturing people about the lack of purity in the fuckin’ world and how the Scotts and the Irish were makin’ half-breeds in fucking Canada of all places. Was gettin’ all red in the face, blustery about how there’s a lot of Scottish and French half-breeds, but that you’d never see any English half-breeds.”_

_“That’s just factually incorrect,” Theo replied, huffing._

_“You heard this one before?” Evan asked as he maneuvered her arm to stretch her shoulder, watching her face for reactions._

_“No,” Theo replied._

_He kept a hand on her arm to keep her shoulder in place and gave a short, light bap to her nose with two fingers. “Then don’t interrupt me. Anyway, this English fuck’s going on and on about half-breeds and how the Scotts and the French have so many, especially with Native Americans. A woman in the audience pops up and says, ‘Yeah, we have_ **_got_ ** _to draw the fucking line_ **_somewhere_ ** _.’”_

* * *

The line had to be drawn fucking somewhere indeed, Theo thought to herself as the elevator door popped open. The joke was probably ancient, older than her and Evan combined, but she suddenly had more of an appreciation for what the joke was getting at. She followed Mr. Pennyworth through the hallway out of the apartment building. Outside sat a disgustedly well-waxed “tiny” limo (just enough to fit eight people rather than the average sixteen a limo Mr. Wayne could no doubt afford to own), its black paint giving Theo an oddly crisp mirror of her own expression. She could catch the look of unease and distaste in her eyes before it got too bad, before she had to get into the limo. Theo schooled her expression as Mr. Pennyworth opened the door.

“Thank you,” she told Mr. Pennyworth, keeping herself just loud enough to be heard over traffic.

“You’re welcome, miss.”

Theo got into the limo, sitting down on the closest seat. At the far end, close to the driver, was Bruce Wayne in all of his glory. The suit alone had to be $30k, well-tailored to him and his lifestyle. The watch on his left wrist? An easy $2k. Wasn’t the nicest watch she’d ever seen, it was a decade or so out of fashion and she guessed it was made out of stainless steel rather than silver by the finish. The hair gel probably keeping his hair in check? Probably worth more than the watch by itself.

The man in question gave her a thousand dollar grin. “Ms. Soliani, right?”

Did he...did he forget that he bossed Leonard into this meeting? Theo shifted her sitting position to mask the brief spike of annoyance. “That’s me, Mr. Wayne.”

“Please, call me Bruce,” he replied. “It’s lovely meeting you. I’ve been told you’re partially responsible for reforming the Rogues.”

Theo raised her eyebrows at him. “Can I be honest, Bruce?”

“By all means.”

“I maybe have a three to five percent credit for their reformation,” Theo replied. She paused as the limo began to move, gesturing with her hands and emphasizing the numbers physically (just to be safe). “I’m not the first kid that the Rogues have taken in. If it was a kid turning them good, it would’ve happened with Mirror Apprentice. No, I think the large portion of the credit goes to their own priorities changing and to a better paycheck being offered. Me? I’ve been told I’m mostly responsible for getting Cold’s head on straight.”

“And where Cold goes,” Bruce replied, “the rest of the Rogues follow. I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit.”

“And that’s a subject of a lot of debate, but not one that I imagine you flew all the way out to Central City for.” Theo braced herself as the limo turned a corner. “What are you _really_ here for, _Mr. Wayne?”_

“I gave the Rogues a time frame for them settling into their adjusted lives,” he answered. “They’ve met most of my deadlines easily. The one that they haven’t is, well.” Bruce gestured at her. “You. Do you know why that is?”

“Because the idea of adopting Piper is one thing,” Theo answered. “They’ve all _been_ family, more or less, for years. Me? I’m new. We’re all only starting to get to know each other.”

“Forgive me for possibly being presumptuous, Ms. Soliani,” Bruce replied, “but in my experience, adopting a child in need doesn’t hinge on me _knowing_ the child all that well.”

Theo tried to take her inhale of air very quietly. It smelled like the backend of Fuji in this car and she had no doubt that was on _purpose._ “And what would you say is the reason?”

“Do you _want_ them to adopt you?” Bruce’s eyes locked onto hers and she shuffled in her seat. Why the hell did this playboy have this intense of a stare? It didn’t make sense. It was probably the sore topic that was getting her like this.

“Yes!” She threw her right hand into the air before combing her fingers through her hair. “Yes, I want them to adopt me! Unlike much of my current biological family, they actually _want_ me around! Getting the legal stuff taken care of would be a _blessing_ because it’d facilitate so much stuff and make me being on the team so much _easier._ Have a rough night patrolling? I don’t have to lie to a foster family, Cold could just call me in sick and that’d be the end of that. He’d take care of all of that.”

“I could very easily do the same thing,” Bruce replied, sitting back in his seat as the limo did another turn.

Theo took a deep breath. “No offense, sir,” she replied, “but there was a _reason_ that my previous mentor had me moving around the country before I stumbled onto the Rogues. It’s a pretty relevant to why I have to say no to you being my legal guardian.”

“Why is that?” Bruce raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow and he was just. So lucky she didn’t have eye lasers. She’d shave that damn eyebrow right off, right now. “We don’t have much in your file. Anything you’d like to share would be appreciated.”

“He was, originally, located in Washington DC,” Theo replied. “The _center_ of rich, uncaring as-idiots making changes just to put more money in their pockets. My first night after I was cleared to be in a city? I tried to rob a bank.”

Both of his stupid eyebrows were raised now. “Did you?”

“I wasn’t all gaudy about it,” Theo answered, gesturing calmly while she spoke. “Wasn’t looking to be a theme criminal, no fame, nothing. I just wanted to spread everything around a little. He caught me in the planning phase and smacked the idea out of me pretty quick. From then on, I wasn’t allowed anywhere like DC. No Gotham, no Metropolis, no LA, no Chicago, no Malibu, etcetera. Anywhere that was likely stomping ground for the omega rich? I wasn’t allowed. Central was the first big city I’d been in and the nominal test of it all was to keep cool around cops and rich folks while taking back the money that’d been stolen from the bank.” She steepled her fingers. “So, while the offer to adopt me is nice and generous, I think it’d be a better professional atmosphere if we didn’t go that route.”

Bruce watched her for a moment. “That’s probably for the best,” he replied. “So that leaves one of the Rogues.”

“What, Batman’s not adopting?” she asked, her voice taking a sardonic twist.

Bruce laughed. “That man’s not a father figure.”

“The Internet would like to agree to disagree.” She sighed. “Look. Mirror Master’s going to have a hard time as is getting Mirror Apprentice acknowledged as his family _and_ adopting Piper. Heatwave’s gonna be laughed out of a courthouse because they don’t get that while he’s got the huge history of arson and pyromania, he’s working on being _better._ Lisa’s out because I’m pretty sure her style of mothering me would drive me up a wall.”

There was a pause, with a look of curiosity briefly flashing through his face before it settled on his friendly “default”. “That leaves Cold,” Bruce replied.

“Who has so many father-related issues that, if they were physical, could possibly rival the size of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic,” Theo drawled.

He tilted his head to the side, raising his eyebrows. “That so?”

Theo clammed up immediately. It had to be in Leonard’s file, right? Lisa mentioned him being fucked with by a psych and criminals probably didn’t get patient confidentiality. Not on Leonard’s level. Was this a mind game? Or was he truly so incompetent that he didn’t have some on-hand knowledge of his caped “employee”? Is that how Batman got so much out of this guy? Occam’s Razor, Theo. He’s got a huge company and probably lets Batman work as a manager of sorts for this sort of gig. He’s here because he wanted to feel involved. It’s like when her step-mom would get in her face about knowing what went where while Theo would fix her computer.

Theo put on her tech-assistance voice, schooling her panic behind a mask of indifference. “Yeah. Turns out, being in this line of work, not everyone’s a picture of perfect mental health. Who knew it took stuff like that to put on a parka in 100 degree Fahrenheit weather in the midwest?”

If she hadn’t been so practiced in looking for it in Leonard, Theo wouldn’t’ve caught the fraction of a movement in the corner of his lips. Can put that on the achievement board: almost made Bruce Wayne break from friendly business persona with a joke.

“And what makes you want to be in this lifestyle, Ms. Soliani?” he asked. “The others are on record for saying that it’s because normal lives can’t work for them anymore. Not with what they’ve seen, not with what they’ve done. What’s your angle?”

Theo paused for a moment, looking at him. Out of curiosity, she pinged the limo, the watch, any tech she could think of that she could say with at least 55% certainty was something he owned long term enough to have an echo of him. The limo contained multitudes of echos, too many people. The watch, though. The watch was more complex than visual input had had Theo believe. An advanced computer, connected to a satellite, which from a gentle nudge with her powers seemed to be connected to somewhere in Gotham. There were emotions connected to the watch, so many deep roiling pockets of intense emotion. Theo kept herself back, made sure she didn’t get sucked into any of the pockets. Easy since she could “see” the pockets from a far distance. Like standing next to a space heater, she could get the runoff heat of the pockets: snippets of anger, of willpower, of trust and distrust, of calculatingly pinpoint _veracity._ He was a fighter. He was like Leonard. And he was in her corner.

Theo took a deep breath and replied, “Nobody has one angle. Nobody has _one_ reason. I can safely quote Leonard in that if he doesn’t have five ulterior motives, then he’s probably mind controlled. I think everybody’s got a butterfly effect going on, with how they come to any specific lifestyle or even _moment._ With me, you can go and point at the Survivors of Lagina kidnapping me from my internship at LexCorp and go ‘that was her catalyst moment’ because that’s the reason why I’ve got powers. Because they implanted a magical artifact into my spine.”

She folded her fingers together, watching him with the same intensity he’d given her earlier now that she knew what kind of person he actually was. He was trying to hide it all beneath the billionaire idiot show he’d given her earlier, but now that the echoes in his watch had given him away, she knew he was smarter than he let on. He was doing something similar to what Leonard called the Showman: act dumber than your mark to make them feel in control.

Theo continued, “But that doesn’t answer your question. You can make assumptions that it’s all that one moment, that the trauma of being magically experimented on by a trio of immortal and unbalanced wizards is what makes me get up in the morning and go ‘I wanna make sure nobody ever experiences stuff like that ever again and thus I will use what they gave me to do it’, but it’d be _wrong._ A single moment can change the path a person takes, yes, but it’s everything else that builds into who they are that gives them those forks in the road to begin with. So, to answer your question, Theodore Soliani taught me to be good and to help others. Then, in circumstances that nobody’s ever been able to figure out, he was killed. This lead me to a down spiral in which I either pushed everyone away or they decided I wasn’t worth the effort. Then the Survivors happened. Then the Justice League let Winters have me because they believed his words about being able to take care of me. Then Central City happened. Central City happened and for the first time since my dad died, I get to be a _person.”_

Bruce Wayne went to open his mouth when Theo took a pause for a deep breath, but she cut him off, “Where I’d be a failure, a _renegade_ to Winters, a doomed project to my step-mom, and a danger to the Justice League, Leonard looks at me and thinks I have the makings to really be _someone._ I want in on this lifestyle to _prove him right._ I want to do what’s right, keep people safe, and I want to do it all with what Leonard can teach me so I can prove his dad wrong too. The Rogues are all people broken by life and I can’t see myself fitting in anywhere else. I’m a Rogue, Mr. Wayne. They knew it the moment they spotted me. Just like how you knew you had to have Batman in your life, I know I’m a Rogue at heart and don’t belong anywhere else. With Leonard, with the Rogues, I can do a lot of good because I’m a person with them. And that’s the goal: to be a person, not a weapon or a tool or whatever, that helps other people.”

Theo leaned back, running a hand through her hair, and gave him as close to a Snart smirk as she could. “That good audio for the microphone in your watch, Mr. Wayne?”

The air seemed to stiffen around them and Theo remembered that this is a man who was Batman’s boss. Someone who could boss around Batman and get away with it, somehow. Or was she assuming too much about their relationship? She didn’t have data to work from, the most she had on a Wayne-Batman connection off the top of her head was that one idiot on the Internet who would compare Bruce Wayne’s ass to Batman’s from time to time and say they were the same. She swapped profiles for how to handle this, watching the tiniest of signs in Wayne’s face. It was all friendly businessman, but there were things about facial expressions that people couldn’t control. She looked for things he’d try to hide, any tells.

But she found none.

Wayne laughed, “How’d you know?”

“I’m a technopath, Mr. Wayne,” she answered. “Visual make of the watch might fool other people, but not someone like me. It has a nice OS, by the way, it’d be very good in a smartphone.”

“Oliver Queen would never forgive me if I went into that market.” He leaned back in his seat. “Was that true? What you said?”

“It was,” Theo replied. “I don’t see any reason to lie. Leonard said to play nice. Figured being honest was part of that.”

“It makes having a professional relationship a bit easier if we’re both honest with each other,” Wayne replied. “So, if I were to take that audio and play it for Mr. Snart, how would you feel?”

“Are you playing it with or without my permission?” Theo asked. “There’s a lot of variables there. If it’s without my permission, I’d be pretty upset. Angry enough for a lot of swear words. If, big if, you had my permission, I’d feel...okay. It’s a lot of things I should say to Leonard directly, but haven’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to make him uncomfortable. Because it’s easier to say around a complete stranger that I don’t think I’ll talk to ever again, either because I’ll keep you at arm’s reach or because you’ll have legitimate reasons to keep distance. Because I just figured out how to put those thoughts coherently as I was saying them, just now.” Theo sighed. “Because lots of reasons?”

Wayne hummed, giving her a slow, understanding nod. “Do I have your permission to share that audio with Leonard and Batman? Batman’s been interested in hearing your motives for quite some time. Since the warehouse.”

Theo paused a moment. Was she okay with Leonard hearing all of that? It made her a little nervous, the idea of it, but at the same time...he needed to be told. She still wasn’t entirely pleased with Mr. Wayne, not entirely fond of the feeling of being indebted to a rich guy like this, but...credit where credit’s due. He made a situation where she could stumble into clarity. She wondered if it was on purpose. Damn it, what was on her Justice League file? She added it to her to-do list. Gave her an additional reason to play nice with Mr. Wayne: play nice with him, stay within radius of Batman, use Batman’s computers to get into Justice League databases. The additional resources were a bonus and this also put her into a position to see if she could find a subtler way to redistribute large piles of wealth without being detected. Getting distracted, off course, did she want Leonard hearing all of that?

She slowly exhaled. Theo answered, “I think so. If it’d reassure Leonard about adopting me, I’m all for it. If Batman wants answers himself, Batman should just _ask_ me rather than beat around the bush. Just have him put all his questions in a list on a clipboard, he can just go through them one by one.”

Bruce laughed. “You’d be there for hours.”

“If it gets him off my back, then it’s fine,” Theo replied. “I’m supposed to be on the same side as him. Leonard says knowing your teammates helps with figuring out how to work together. In the off-chance I work with him at some point, it’s for the better that we have some actual basis of what the other’s like since I’ve probably got assumptions and biases and he’s got what? ‘Girl crazy enough to throw self in front of bullet to save a theme criminal’?”

“Girl brave enough to save a life,” Bruce answered. “Maybe in more ways than just the physical life.”

Theo snorted. “That’s a generous way of putting it, Mr. Wayne. Also, one I can imagine Leonard getting fussy about.”

“I don’t imagine you to understand this when I say this, Theophania,” Bruce replied, “but sometimes having children around, being there for one, can make all the difference in a person’s life.”

Theo tilted her head, frowning a little. She slowly sighed. “Why are adults always giving me advice these days? Do I have a sign on my forehead?”

Bruce chuckled at that.

They didn’t talk for much longer after that. A lot of it was back and forth about logistics, possibly trying to get Sam as her legal guardian or maybe Mick. Theo knocked the Lisa idea as much and as fondly as she could, not wanting to cramp on Lisa’s style or get into a position where that relationship might turn nasty. When they had a possible alternative, Bruce dropped her off back at the apartment building. She went back up the elevator with Mr. Pennyworth, who was as silent as before, but it didn’t feel as brutal this time.

Immediately upon seeing the hallway leading to the apartment door, Theo was on edge. The door was open. Just the tiniest of bits. She started pinging for tech, looking for the now familiar feel of the three cold guns that Leonard kept around the apartment and only finding the one secret one. The emergency one, the somewhat weaker one because there were components made of plastic rather than metal. There was nothing else unusual in the apartment, no bombs, no cameras, nothing, so she felt okay slowly poking the door open.

She turned to Mr. Pennyworth. “Leonard’s missing.”

“How-”

Theo opened the door all the way, standing in the doorway and bringing the emergency gun to her hand with a flick of a wrist. She assembled it around her wrist, emotionally hardening herself. She looked back at Mr. Pennyworth. “You tell your boss.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Stick around here. Get Sam’s attention. Leonard wouldn’t want me going out on my own.”

She didn’t think it was possible, but somehow, the man found a way to narrow his eyes further. “I’ll tell Master Bruce then.”

Theo nodded, watching him go. She closed the door, locking it (locks told a story of being ripped apart and put back together again. Blacksmith). She ran to her room, writing a letter to Sam and leaving it by the mirror in the kitchen he’d been using as his main entry way into the Oliver Brant apartment. Theo pulled out a compact mirror from Leonard’s stash, using a sharpie to make a small dot in the side of the mirror like the one on the mirror in the kitchen. She folded it, put it in a pocket, and then got out on the fire escape.

“Okay, okay, okay,” she muttered. “You’re the protege of Captain fucking Cold. You’re the Key. You’ve done this before, kind of. It’s risky, but...he needs help _now.”_ Theo closed her eyes and raised her hands.

Viruses were something she used to write when she was younger. She was the reason why Seattle Police all flinched at USB drives on sight and why they were hyper-paranoid about emails. The design was simple: you take a code, you teach it to multiply itself, and you put it out into the world.

The last was the easiest thing these days: she could connect to _anything._ The hard part was writing code in her head, without seeing it visually. So instead, she took herself through the same mental exercise she did when casting one of the spells Winters taught her. _Control._ 87 had called her Admin. What Theo said _went._ She kept that in mind, pulling her mind into a nearby traffic light. Into part of the city’s digital infrastructure.

/command  
Find User:Captain_Cold

It’s not like 87. There is no talking, only a general mass of data that rides through her mind like the tide rolling in. It’s directionless, an 8-bit foaming mass of energy, of want, of infrastructure and security howling for the hunt, just give them a target, just give them what she wants and they’ll find it.

She remembers the memory that she gave 87.

/supply(type:memory, User:Captain_Cold)  
“You and me, we’re people that everyone always underestimated, tossed aside, and tried to control. That’s why we get along with the rest of the Rogues—we’re all the same way. Day by day, we’re gonna keep proving ‘em all wrong.”

/command  
Find User:Captain_Cold

The data takes her warmth, her light, the hope he gave her, and floods every system.

/command  
Send location_data of User:Captain_Cold to Endpoint

She springs back to her body for a moment, to take a few deep breaths, and then jumps into her Q-phone.

/command  
Designate Endpoint

Theo links the command to the code she’s already woven, watching the code light up in beautiful blue like an aurora through the city’s datascape. She’s breathless in that moment, watching the beauty of it, but she snaps out of it.

She snaps back to her body and muttered, “We’re gonna keep proving them all wrong.” Her Q-phone dinged and she pulled up the GPS. Theo went down to street level, running through people through their commute. The street lights change to her because they know her now, she’s the Admin they never knew they had. Theo paused a moment and sent a quick reprimand to them.

/command  
Don’t endanger others to help Admin:Key.

She disconnected before she could feel the fizzing mass of data again, crossing streets and heading to where she needed to go. She kept her gauntlet hand in her parka, sometimes nervously taking her fingers and stroking the plastic of the cold gauntlet a bit at the very few places she had to stop and wait.

Theo finally, through a lot of traffic travelling and some pretty prime prowling, reached a warehouse district by the river.

Slowly, Theo began to ping for Leonard’s guns, hoping against all hope that they’d been taken with. She grinned as she found them, letting them guide her to the warehouse. She pinged inside further, finding Leonard’s wristwatch and sagged against the wall outside.

Okay, Theo. Step one, make the plan. Go in, neutralize hostiles, get Leonard, get out. She took a deep breath, looking around and finding a door. She found a spare pipe nearby, froze the lock, and then smashed it off.

Step two, execute the plan.


	11. 01110111 01100001 01110010 01101101

Theo slipped inside the warehouse, right in time as a pair of high heels began click-click-clicking towards her. She hid in the midst of a bunch of boxes, seeing just the tiniest hint of a platinum blonde ponytail peeking out between the shelves of boxes. She watched the woman check the opening she’d made, guessing that that woman was Blacksmith through all the black leather, all the silver-colored jewelry, and the way she held statuesque shoulders.

Blacksmith sighed and clapped her hands once, twice. There was metallic screeching as the streetlight from outside was cut off by what Theo assumed was Blacksmith forcing the doors to be thinner to close up the hole. Theo silently followed Blacksmith through the warehouse as she went back further inside, into what could’ve been a security guard’s office at some point. She locked the door behind her and Theo posted up outside of it, using nearby boxes to get on top of the office.

“Oh Lenny,” Blacksmith’s voice drawled loudly from inside it. “Did Lisa pick back up the skates?”

Theo couldn’t hear Leonard’s response, but whatever it was prompted Blacksmith to laugh loud enough to be heard through the wall. There was a loud smack. Theo felt her throat constrict and grit her teeth. She blinked as the lights turned off. She pinged out with her powers and internally cursed herself. She heard the door below her slam open and she heard the click-click-click of Blacksmith’s heels click out of the office.

Three, expect the plan to go off the rails.

She took a deep breath and let herself ping for tech on Blacksmith’s person. She found a watch, tick-tick-ticking with Blacksmith’s click-click-clicking, the watch feeling soft, fragile, shaken in its framework and steeped in pure aggression.

Four, throw away the plan.

She aimed the cold gauntlet and fired at the watch, the blinding white light of the cold generation flashing through the dark of the warehouse. Theo blinked her eyes a few times, but in the span of those blinks, she was pulled down by her own parka’s zipper into the floor. She ripped the parka off of herself, flashing back on the lights.

Blacksmith stood above her, grey eyes glowing with a soft, white light and rage as she held her arms out at her sides, palms up and elbows against her torso. “Hello,” she snarled. “You’re Snart’s newest brat, aren’t you?”

“Such a frosty reception,” Theo replied, words coming out between her catching her breath. She slowly stood up, glaring up at Blacksmith. “I knew metal was cold, but _oof.”_

Blacksmith sighed, her stance relaxing like she just realized that she was dealing with a cockroach rather than a spider. “Oh good, ice puns. You Rogue types needed a third one to throw those around, didn’t you?”

“Snowflakes tend to fall in groups, what can I say,” Theo replied, calling the cold gauntlet back to her hand from her parka’s sleeve.

Blacksmith narrowed her eyes, but grinned. “Oh, kiddo, you’re like me, aren’t you?”

“Nah,” Theo replied. “Haven’t you heard?” She froze Blacksmith’s foot to the floor, taking several steps back. “Ice is colder than metal.”

Blacksmith snapped her fingers and Theo dropped to the floor, dodging nails flinging out of boxes and kitchenware products of all sorts falling to the floor. “Deny it all you want, but we’re metas, kiddo,” Blacksmith replied. “Metahumans like us should stick together, don’t you think?”

“I’d rather not,” Theo answered, letting her powers find anything and throwing it at Blacksmith as Theo let herself find her way to her feet. A toaster (deflected, tossed aside with a smirk), a ceramic frying pan (got her in the solar plexus), and a pressure cooker (Blacksmith removed the metal of it, but had nothing for Theo’s hold on the rest of it. Got her in the head). Theo hummed, letting herself feel the same flow she did while she was tracking Leonard through the city. She raised her hand and kitchenware flowed to her command of dog-piling Blacksmith. It fell halfway through as a sharp, stabbing pain flooded Theo’s nervous system, all along her spine.

Blacksmith shakily stood to her feet, her grin like a feral animal’s teeth bared in aggression and it was tinged in purely human manic energy. “Ooooh, you’re not like me. You have this chunk of metal-” She clapped her hands and Theo was thrown into the wall by the key in her back “-in your back! Oh, you’re _just_ like Desmond, aren’t you? Has Lenny told you about his old _crazy_ boyfriend? You’d think he’d-” Blacksmith clapped again and Theo was thrown into the ceiling of the warehouse with a shriek “-learn!” She clapped and Theo snapped from the ceiling down to floating in front of her.

Theo coughed. “You...you want to know what he’s taught me?”

“Oh, this should be good,” Blacksmith drawled, dragging a finger from Theo’s lips to her chin. Blacksmith grabbed Theo’s chin in an iron-grip, her thumbnail digging painfully by Theo’s bottom lip and her knuckle under Theo’s chin. “What did that old idiot teach you?”

“How...how do you sneak in a snowflake?” Theo asked, seeing a flash of light from her parka (sitting in a heap behind Blacksmith, forgotten, overlooked, like the pocket mirror in her pocket).

Blacksmith sighed. “What a waste. Filled your head with stupid ice-riddles-” She dropped Theo as Weather Wizard punched her in the jaw. He had his wand in his other hand and a storm cloud forming over his head, lightning crackling within it.

“You throw it in a blizzard,” Theo replied as Mirror Apprentice started to check her over.

Mirror Apprentice didn’t even flinch as thunder boomed behind him, glaring down at her. “You’re a crazy bitch, you know that right?”

“Crazy bitch who knew you all would follow the breadcrumbs I left behind,” Theo answered, grinning tiredly. “Solid Plan B for when the Plan A was inevitably fucked.” She weakly raised her hands, making finger guns. “Bada-bing, bada-boom.”

Mirror Apprentice opened his mouth, but was cut off by Weather Wizard barking out a laugh. Theo looked over to see Weather Wizard grinning down at her.

“Knew you were a Rogue,” Weather Wizard laughed, “just didn’t know you were that much of a chip off the glacier.” His laugh was like knives, short and sharp. It didn’t reach his eyes. If anything, it was like lightning in his eyes, an almost invisible crackling of energy. Theo didn’t know what kind of energy it was, but it shook her deep in her ribs.

She flicked a smile on her face, keeping it up as she groaned at Mirror Apprentice poking her ribs and back. “Thanks for the faith, Wizard.”

He snorted. “Sure thing, train-wreck.”

Theo looked up at Mirror Apprentice. “What’s the verdict, doc?”

Mirror Apprentice rolled his eyes, but her only sign of that was the darker spot in his white goggles rolling in just the same rhythm and pattern that Evan did whenever someone said something ridiculous. “You’ll live. No broken ribs, no big emergency things. She wasn’t out to kill you, surprisingly enough.”

Weather Wizard replied, “Never kill what you can recycle into your organization. She’s not that much of an idiot to try to kill our ice cube for something like this.”

“Aw, you say the sweetest things, Wiz,” Theo drawled as Mirror Apprentice helped her up.

Wizard snorted. “You only catch flies with honey.”

“And you think I’m better than a fly, that’s so thoughtful.”

The look in Weather Wizard’s eyes softened, his brow relaxing slightly. He moved over, ruffling Theo’s hair. “Do you ever know when to shut up, train-wreck?”

“Yeah,” Theo answered, slowly pulling her aching weight onto her feet with Mirror Apprentice hovering to make sure she didn’t fall. “Just always turns out better for me when I don’t. How else can I win charming criminals to my side for a rescue if I don’t give them a talk show to follow?”

“Kid.”

Theo’s attention snapped over to Leonard, who was leaning against Mirror Master and Heatwave. Her body straightened and she walked over, taking the cold gauntlet off of her arm and reforming it into its original gun shape. She held it in her hands, careful to have the safety on, as she stopped in front of Leonard.

“Followed the steps,” she replied. “Make the plan, execute the plan, expect it to go off the rails, and throwaway the plan. Improvised with my own step five, of having a plan B. What grade would you give _that,_ Mr. Mentor?” Theo crossed her arms, leaning on her right foot and holding the cold gun with one of her hands.

Leonard stared at her, his blue eyes unreadable. She switched her lean to her left foot, keeping her face an icily cool, determined look. Their stare down probably would’ve gone down for some time, but Heatwave broke it by giving a large belly-born laugh. Leonard snorted, emotion slowly leaking back in with an ease of annoyance and affection.

“Mick, stop being a dick,” Leonard drawled, “I know that this is very funny to you-”

“Funniest shit since Tricks made us watch Mulaney’s New in Town,” Heatwave replied.

“-but you’re being a dick.” Leonard limped out from his teammates’ grasps, limping forward. He looked back at Theo, a soft smirk spreading on his face. “Kid, let’s leave these chucklefucks to giggle among themselves. I’ve got paperwork, phone calls, and a court session to make in...fuck, what time is it?”

“Seven-ish,” Wizard answered. “At night, in case you were hit harder than I thought you were.”

“Yeah, gotta get that court session done before the 15th,” Leonard replied, plowing right past Weather Wizard’s verbal poke. He ruffled Theo’s hair. “Gotta get this one ready to enroll in school.”

Theo tilted her head under his hand, frowning in confusion. “Don’t I need a legal guardian-”

“You use up your brain, kid, rescuing your old man?” Heatwave asked. “He’s finally caught up with the rest of us.”

Theo looked up at Leonard, who looked back down at her. Theo blinked slowly, asking quietly, “You...you want to adopt me?”

“Should make it official,” Leonard replied, “since you’re already my damn kid.”

Theo felt tears fill her eyes. She hugged the wind out of him, burying her face in his chest. Theo felt him put a hand on her back and she let herself relax.

* * *

**Central City, MO** **  
** **September 15th, 2014**

“Theophania Soliani?”

Theo raised her hand. “Theo Soliani-Snart, sir,” she replied. “My dad’s in the works to adopt me, so Snart and Theophania makes me feel like an old lady. So, Theo Soliani-Snart.”

The teacher huffed and said something under his breath. He jumped a mile into the air as the lights turned off. He put the roll sheet down on his podium, grumbling, “It seems the power’s out in our room. Behave, I’ll be back shortly with one of the maintenance people.” The teacher left.

Theo sat at her desk, unable to keep from smiling even as Hartley threw a paper ball at her head. She plucked it up, recognizing the Rogue cipher on it. She slowly decrypted it, reading its message, _“Starting trouble already?”_

She laughed, turning over to Hartley. “Oh, like you’re one to talk, Mr. Rory.”

Hartley Rory grinned at her. “I have no idea _what_ you’re talking about.”

“Mmmmhmmm,” Theo replied. “So you weren’t pick-pocketing people on our way in?”

Hartley put a hand to his chest, leaning back in his chair. “Me? Never.”

“Funny,” Theo replied, taking a glittery pink wallet out of her pocket. “This isn’t your color at all, Hart.”

Hartley’s eyes widened and he guffawed. “Ms. Soliani-Snart, you _wound_ me.”

“Can you two overdramatic idiots quiet down?” a voice behind them asked. “It’s hard to focus on sketching in the dark with you two going back and forth.”

Theo tossed the wallet to Hartley, replying, “Sorry um...Roy, right?”

The kid, Roy, hummed, “Mmmmhmmm.”

Theo looked over her shoulder at Roy. He was a lanky kid, like a pipe cleaner statue. He had skin like some light colored wood, like sanded plywood. He had black hair that was meticulously styled out of his face, gelled back, and his eyes were either so dark brown that they looked black or actually black (only a closer look in the sun would help to figure out the exact color). Theo faintly remembered that his name made her think of ROYGBIV, but couldn’t quite get a handle on it in her brain since she’d been focused on lightly pinging the school’s infrastructure at the time it’d been called. He had a sketch book laid out on his desk and he was sketching something highly geometric: all sharp points, all triangles and pyramids, all interlocking with each other like vertabrae or knuckle bones.

“I’d say take a picture if you’re going to stare that hard,” Roy replied, “but that’d be leaving my work open for you to put it up on some YouTube cringe compilation video.”

“Dude, why would I put it in one of those, it’s so good,” Theo replied.

Roy paused, taking his pen away from the page like he’d set the page on fire if he continued. He looked up at her, his eyebrows slowly furrowing. “You...you think so?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Your line-work is really good and the composition’s seriously thought-provoking.”

His eyes narrowed. “Even if there’s no color?”

Theo tilted her head. “There’s no color for me to take in, so I’m leaving it out of the equation entirely.”

“And if there’ll be no color?”

“Then it stays out of the equation,” Theo answered. “I’m pretty sure that’s an artistic decision on your part and a clear message to the viewer. Besides, color doesn’t make art.”

Hartley snorts. “Says the girl whose closet is ninety-five percent black and white.”

Theo stuck her tongue out at him, but spotted Roy’s guard softening a bit. She smiled a bit. “Ignore him, he’s just teasing me, but seriously color doesn’t _make_ art. Without the linework, without the shading, what’s color but a blizzard of nonsense?”

“A blizzard of nonsense.” Roy seemed to be tasting the phrase in his mouth. “I like that. It sums up how color is to me, given that I can’t see it the way everybody else does.”

“Then the fact that you don’t want to use color makes sense,” Theo replied. Leonard’s words came to mind and she couldn’t stop herself from reciting them. “Use what you got, but if you lack something, faking it is the fastest way to make yourself look like an idiot.”

“Exactly!” Roy got up from his chair, moving up to Theo’s left and bringing his sketchbook with him. “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to argue with art teachers for years! Everyone always tries to ‘teach’ me colors out of some ‘noble’ sense that I’m missing out on some great secret, but colors mean something else entirely to me than they do to others. So to make art that others can understand, I stick to black and white.”

Theo could tell that he was a soda can person, like her. The type of person that’d been forced to keep shut up, no matter how much they’d been shaken. Theo quietly decided to add Roy to her short list of people to keep a special eye on, but then inspiration struck. Artists have keen eyes. Roy’s possible color blindness meant that he had an entirely different perspective, meaning that he had double the possibility of noticing things that she overlooked and wouldn’t keep quiet about it either, if his mannerisms now were a sign of anything. He was a renegade against his art teachers, Hartley was a renegade against the high school ecosystem, and she was a renegade for those who had those kinds of fights. The decision came pretty easily: she was befriending Roy if it was the last thing she did. They’d be a founding trio, just like Leonard, Mick, and Sam.

“That makes sense,” she replied, doing her best to keep her voice politely interested and on the right side of friendly. “So are you planning to add shading to this?” She gestured at the sketch. “I can see it being pretty effective at the confusion and intrigue the piece evokes.”

If it wasn’t for her practice with watching Leonard’s facial expressions, Theo would’ve missed the brief flash of happiness that swept through Roy’s face like the world’s fastest wildfire. Theo internally grinned, but kept her face politely interested.

“Maybe,” Roy replied, humming. “In pencil. Give it rounded shaded, confuse the mind a bit by making the pyramids look strangely paradoxical.”

“Very Lovecraftian,” Theo replied. She held out a hand. “Theo Soliani-Snart.”

He slowly took it. His hand was ink-stained. “Roy G. Bivol.”

Theo gestured to Hartley. “The fountain of smugness to my right is my non-official brother, Hartley Rory. You wanna sit with us at lunch?”

Roy looked between her, then to Hartley, then to her again. “I...I would like that,” he replied, his words slow. “Where are we meeting?”

“We haven’t scouted places yet, though we’re both pretty keen on avoiding the cafeteria,” Hartley answered. “If Theo has her way, we’ll be in easy reach of the computer lab.”

“Computer labs are important institutions for learning,” Theo replied, putting her fingertips to her collarbone. “And if I want to do some extra-curricular learning, is that a _crime,_ Hart?”

Hartley snickered. “Anyway, Roy, what class do you have before lunch? I can swing by and pick you up, then we can hunt down this nerd.”

Theo watched, internally grinning still as she absorbed the two making plans. She knew she had Leonard and the other Rogues as backup if things at school got too heated, but if she was such a chip off the old glacier, then wouldn’t it be just fitting if she made her own Renegades here at school? A gathering of allies, JIC.

Just in case. Theo hummed, letting the lights flicker back on. Her mind whirled with Leonard’s lessons as she reviewed what she knew of the school, a list of possible threats (for example, a Bryan Ellison sneered at Hartley earlier this morning and the adjectives came rolling to her as she reviewed that interaction: old money fashion, broad-shouldered, open stance, and _open_ pockets. Some kind of history with Hartley, from what she could tell from the very brief interaction), modes of movement (hallways obviously, but the school had vents that seemed large enough for a camera attached to a remote control car to drive through), and everything else.

She wrote it all down in Rogue cipher in a blue notebook, wondering with a bit of eagerness just how Leonard...no, how her _father_ would critique her first foray into casing a joint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Hi, hello, I'm back from gods be damned Disney World. I hate that place so much at the moment, two weeks is too much time for an introvert to have absolutely zero (0) personal space (I didn't even have my own bed). For those of y'all that read my Meddling Metas stuff in the meantime, bless I hope it was fun. If you didn't, that's okay, I just wanted to post stuff to show that I was alive.
> 
> 2\. I changed Roy's last name because "Bivolo" gives both me and my boyfriend (who occasionally helps me edit this and is my idea soundboard) fits (I giggle, my boyfriend questions all of DC's decisions, it's a great time). "Bivol" is a compromise last name that actually exists IRL, while still maintaining the ROYGBIV joke that his name explicitly is. It's for similar reasons that he won't be taking the "Rainbow Raider" name as his official cape-name (though it _is_ his nickname, like how the Rogues call Kid Flash "Baby Flash" and Theo "icicle" [Weather Wizard's title of "train-wreck" for Theo doesn't count for this category because that's motivated by something else entirely]).
> 
> 3\. Blacksmith's coming back, don't worry. She's not done yet (she's also gonna be more competent next time, when she's no longer fighting an unknown combatant who can safely work around her powers. Now she knows Theo's weak spot in the key on her back [I did not forget about the key, though Theo kind of sort of did due to the Rogues treating her like a person]). I added some zest to her powers by adding a physical trigger to them, because I wasn't interested in writing her as an explicit Magneto-clone.
> 
> 4\. One more chapter and then we're going on a ~*magical adventure*~ with Weather Wizard in "Whatever Happened to Sunlit Skies?". That is why he has so much screen-time this chapter. Though, if you guys would like, I could also formally write the Rogues' Origin Story Intermission because with what Blacksmith said, I can't avoid that one for much longer. Comment with which you'd prefer me to do first, the loser will be worked on second (though if Origin Story is first, I'm gonna have to cut out some stuff that's huge spoilers for Sunlit Skies, which lessens Marco's section a great deal in that Intermission. Like there's still gonna be an absolute shit ton of Marco content between the two, it's just how fast do you want it).


End file.
